


deus ex (stark, rogers, cat)

by marit



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: And Gets One, Anxiety, But Did I Say Friendship?, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Includes A Cat, Injury, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Civil War, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, So Much Friendship, So much comfort, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Helps Out, Warning for a bit of:
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-24 14:06:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7511246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marit/pseuds/marit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“What are you doing here, Tony?” he finally asks.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Helping. Saving the day. Solving all your problems. Deus ex Stark.” </i>
</p><p> <br/>Or: That time everyone was friends and helped one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You know when you sit on something so long you just start hating it and thinking it's awful because you're trying different things and what if it doesn't work? Yeah. Therefore it is barely, just barely, a WIP. (I know my track record!) 
> 
> Initially the cat was a plot device to tie all the people together and then instead this turned into a behemoth of _words_. I decided I liked the idea of this cat just wandering around bothering everyone while they dealt with their angst anyway. She just wants the angsty attention, and I just want to be the [cat fic writer](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3914818). 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

He doesn’t mean to adopt the cat. He really doesn’t.

She’s sitting in the lobby of the tower one Tuesday morning like right below that giant modern painting is exactly where she belongs. Everyone walking past glances at her but doesn’t do a thing about it like they too think maybe that is exactly where a cat belongs, if only because she sits with such confidence. 

“Whose cat is that?” he asks Madeline, who is looking competent at the front desk like she normally is this time of a weekday. 

“I don’t know, Mr. Stark. I took it outside and it came back in. I am hoping it will leave on its own.” Which seems like a silly stance to take, but sure. It’s just a cat. She’s probably harmless. Unless she’s some sort of alien. Or a spy cat. Or carrying a concealed weapon in her dark fur. 

“Okay, well, try to not let it…” he trails off, waves his hand as if to encompass, “Do anything non-cat-like that might indicate it’s an alien or a spy or somehow out to harm us.” 

Hopefully Madeline understands that. She looks like she does. She nods, at least. Competently. Like always. Tony likes Madeline. He’s not sure he likes her decisions re: the cat, but she’s good. She’s been around awhile. She isn’t frazzled ever. He should give her a raise or something. 

“Will do, Mr. Stark,” she says, her red-lipped smile serene like this is just another normal request at her job. Which to be fair, it sort of is. Weirder things have happened. Aliens and gods have happened. 

He nods, pats the sleek desk three times in an awkward send-off that makes him want to cringe, and pushes himself off to head to the elevator. 

“FRIDAY, talk to Finance. Get them to give Madeline some sort of raise. Money,” he says as soon as he steps into the private elevator and out of hearing range.

“Certainly, sir.”

And then the elevator doors stay open after him.

“FRIDAY? The doors?” 

“There seems to be a cat in the elevator, and I felt you would prefer it to not come upstairs with you.” 

He looks down, and sure enough, the cat from under the art is now sniffing at the corner of the elevator. At what, he doesn’t want to know. 

“Shoo,” he says pathetically, motioning toward the door. 

The cat doesn’t even acknowledge him.

“I don’t want to deal with you. Get out. Go find whoever owns you.” He nudges carefully at the cat with his foot, attempting to guide her (he’s pretty sure it’s a her) to the door. 

She primly jumps over his foot, wedging herself into the corner.

“Right. I don’t care. Close the doors and take me to the workshop. Do whatever it is needs to be done to find whoever owns this cat,” he says, deciding it’s not worth the effort. The cat acknowledges him with a soft inquiring sort of meow as the elevator finally begins to move. 

“Don’t question me. You’re the one who won’t leave.” 

She meows again.

“I am not talking to a cat. Stop.”

She doesn’t stop meowing the whole way.

 

 

“Any progress on the cat situation?” he asks an hour later. Two hours later. Some amount of hours later. He lost track.

“It is registered to a Miss Petra Gurakuqi. She lived in Red Hook.”

He raises his eyebrows at that. How’d the cat end up in his lobby, then? That’s a distance for it to travel. With a river in the way, amongst other things. Before he can ask, though: “What do you mean lived? Past tense?”

“She passed away from breast cancer 17 days ago.”

He sighs, sets down the screwdriver he’s holding. That’s a downer. 

“Kids? Someone else who can take the cat?”

“She has no immediate relatives. Her mother died when she was three from the same disease. Her father died two years ago in a car accident. She has no siblings, and appears to have had no contact with any other family members since moving away from her father 12 years ago. Her neighbors and coworkers did not know of any friends or close acquaintances who might have taken the cat.”

“All right, that’s enough. God, this lady’s depressing.”

He swivels on his chair to face the cat in question, who has curled up on top of one of the cabinets. She opens one eye to look at him, and then slowly shuts it again when he doesn’t move.

“Can I… is there one of those animal shelter things nearby?”

“There is. It is unlikely that a cat of her age would be adopted quickly though, if at all.”

If he didn’t know better, he would think that his AI was being sneaky - that is to say, he apparently didn’t know better, because he thought FRIDAY probably was trying to trick him into keeping the cat and he wasn’t about to play into metaphorical AI hands. He sighs, and scrubs his hand through his hair before letting it drop heavily into his lap. “I’ll deal with it later. Maybe one of the employees or something. There’s a lot of those around.”

The chair rolls away from him when he stands up, bumping lightly into another table and making something rattle. He ignores it, goes to the elevator, goes back for the cat because live things shouldn’t be left unattended in his workshop unless they’re him, and then goes upstairs to eat and pretend to rest, cat in tow.

 

 

He never does deal with it. At first it’s too much effort, and then, well, he grows sort of attached to the tortoiseshell fur-ball that follows him around the Tower all day if he’s there, and greets him in the lobby after he’s not. She never seems to venture outside, which he will never admit to being glad to because the world outside those doors is a scary and dangerous one for a cat. He gives her free reign of the halls, public areas, and the penthouse, and she apparently rides the elevator up and down like a pro. 

When he finally thinks to look it up, he finds out she’s registered under Emma, which seems a bit human-like of a name for a cat, and makes the Petra Gurakuqi situation even sadder because now he can’t stop thinking of her like some sort of cliché lonely woman who is a fan of Austen and cats.

But it’s nice, in a way. Not that Petra was depressing but that she died and he got her cat. (He should probably figure out a less awful sounding way to phrase that before he says that out loud, though.) He likes the cat is all. He won’t tell anyone he does, but she’s company and, well, to be honest that is in short supply for him since Rhodey’s great and all but doesn’t want him around 100% of the time because of personal space and privacy or whatever. And she insists on sleeping right on the bed with him, often in the curve of his legs, which made the room seem a lot less empty. Not that he’d admit that either. Or anything. As far as anyone else is concerned, Emma the cat doesn’t exist to him.

Except when she’s sitting primly right in the middle of his suitcase like she knows he’s going to be leaving for an indeterminate time. Even though that’s the truth, it’s a bit eerie. Or maybe she just likes the suitcase. He can’t tell.

“Em, darling, you’re breaking my heart here,” he says to her, trying to nudge her out of the way. It’s bad timing for a cat, really. This has been planned for ages, at least in a preliminary sort of “Maybe I should get over my pride and do that” sort of way, a basic niggling in the back of his mind that it was inevitable that he’d end in up Wakanda.

The cat, though. He pauses mid-nudge because it’s only just occurred to him: _the cat, though._ “Fuck. FRIDAY, what do I do with the cat?” 

“I believe you find someone to take care of her, sir.” 

Right. Useful. “And where do I find someone?

“I have located four suitable options within your vicinity.” 

“Okay. Choose the best one and set it up,” he says, backing away from the edge of the bed so he can throw socks into the suitcase and straight into her. She looks at him, unimpressed to be pelted, and Tony stops, now mid-T-shirt grabbing, to stare back. 

“Do we have one of those pet carrier things?”

“I can acquire one if you would like.”

“Yes, do that.” And it is stupid, and he doesn’t know why he is doing it and there are probably rules that prohibit it, but suddenly leaving this cat with a stranger seems immeasurably cruel and like something he didn’t want to do at all. He has just accidentally adopted the thing, after all, only a week and a half ago. After she was displaced from her previous owner. It’d be mean to leave her behind. Like abandoning her repeatedly. And maybe she’d like to see the world. So, yes, he is going to bring the cat to Wakanda. Decision made. Because this whole plan wasn’t ridiculous and stupid enough already.

“All right, all right, you’ve convinced me already. Go away,” he says when she continues to stare at him from her position on his jeans, undoubtedly getting fur all over everything. “Get out of there.” He finally scoops her up and dumps her on the floor, where she promptly jumps straight back onto the bed. She stays beside the suitcase, not in it, as if now that she’s successfully enticed him into taking her on an international trip, she’s fine not leaving reminders in the shape of cat fur all over his clothes. Good. 

 

 

Packing is the easy part.

He lets Emma out of the carrier the instant they are at cruising altitude and he’s not sure whether that’s smart or stupid, but her meowing is so incessant and pathetic when she’s in the carrier that he can’t help but give in. He is apparently weak to the meow of a feline. She explores a bit before eventually settling on his lap, barely even twitching when he uses her as a prop for his tablet. 

The flight takes forever because there’s an ocean and the majority of a continent in the way, and it feels like he’s on edge the whole time. In his periphery he can see the tell-tale round case that holds a particular shield he would rather pretend doesn’t exist, and eventually has to nudge the cat off his lap so he can shove the benign black case behind another seat. He at least can’t see it then, as if he can somehow trick his brain into not understanding object permanence anymore if he simply wills it hard enough. 

It barely helps, though. For all that Steve’s encouraging-but-slightly-condescending letter makes him hope he won’t be entirely unwelcome, he’s still showing up largely announced. Or, well, sort of. Not at all unannounced actually, when it comes right down to it. T’Challa knows he’s coming or he’d never even get to land, but it was short notice and out of nowhere for everyone that wasn’t his brain. (“Really, Tony?” Rhodey had said. Yes, really.)

He’s not sure what his reception will be. Even if he can somehow believe he’s still on fair terms with Steve (he doesn’t believe it) there are still other people to take into account. He has no idea where Natasha’s run off to, but Wilson’s there. And Wanda the witch kid. And so forth. Not to mention Barnes, who he’s not entirely sure he’s ready to face but is going to anyway. He sure didn’t write Tony some letter saying all was apparently fine, and it’s not like he expects a warm reception from him. 

He’s determined though, for all that he feels a bit like he’s vibrating internally with nerves. Determined and probably so, so stupid for making this trip. But he can help. He can make things a bit better, even if it’s against everyone’s wishes. And you’d think he’d learn from every other time he’s tried to do that, but apparently not. He’s powering on anyway. This time has got to work. He’s not sure what to do if it doesn’t. They’re running out of time. The “Has Rogers made contact?” phone calls have picked up again, fueled by the Internet’s discovery that the arrested Avengers hadn’t just broken out of some boring old normal jail but some super secret oceanic version of a jail. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t go over well with those who cared about human rights, and now everyone’s scrambling for a solution that has, for some reason, become “Find Rogers and then we can find Barnes and have a scapegoat for the whole thing.” As if Barnes created the super scary secret jail, put the Avengers in it, and then broke them out again just to cause political furor. 

So here he is in a plane somewhere over the ocean, with a cat and an idea and a shield that doesn’t belong to him, and none of any of that really fits together and he refuses to think about all the disparate bits that are going to have to lock into place. God, he wishes he weren’t this nervous.

He forces himself to settle back and puts on the first mindless new release he finds in the movie queue for background noise. The cat settles in again on his lap, warm against his stomach. And he refuses, absolutely refuses, to give into the urge to tell the pilot to turn around, and instead gets to work, because the least he can do is triple-check that he’s not going into this unprepared.

 

 

It’s disgustingly humid when he finally gets off the plane. And green. So green. Also very architecturally beautiful, he’ll admit. But mostly humid. 

The cat meows inquiringly from the depths of the carrier. She shifts, causing the whole ugly fabric-based contraption to tilt. Tony grimaces.

It’s green and humid the whole drive between the airport and wherever it is they’re taking him to. It’s sort of out of his hands. It’s all stern “This way, Mr. Stark” and pointed “Here we are, Mr. Stark,” and a sleek car with tinted windows and a silent driver and a woman taller than him in frighteningly pointy heels sitting in the front seat and more concerned with her phone than providing him with any useful information. He’s tired and jetlagged and anxious, and this is a small country but the drive still seems to take ages. The cat meows morosely beside him the whole way. He is learning she does not like cars. Tony, in this particular situation, is inclined to agree.

T’Challa himself is waiting at the entrance to what looks to be either a house or a really intimate hotel. “Welcome, Mr. Stark,” he says once Tony is close enough. His eyes flicker to the cat carrier and away again, but he doesn’t otherwise acknowledge it. “I hope your journey was pleasant.”

“Good enough. Do you normally greet visitors yourself?” he asks, abrupt, if only to get that bit of awkwardness out of the way. It’s probably not a greeting befitting a king but oh well, he’s only here short-term.

T’Challa shrugs, or whatever the regal equivalent of shrugging is. “I had the time,” he answers, which for all that the sun is starting to set and whatever a king does all day is probably almost coming to an end, Tony knows to mean “I made the time.” He’s oddly grateful for the gesture. It’s not like they were ever overly friendly, so Tony’s not quite sure what puts him above the status of “Some American barging in where he doesn’t belong again”, but he’ll take it and even try not to analyze too hard into what political machinations might be at play.

He’s lead into the building, greeted by a wide lobby that is empty except for two people. One is the man standing behind the desk, who looks up at their arrival, politely acknowledges them, and then goes back to looking busy on a computer. It’s either exceptionally poor service (doubtful) or a very good act at giving them privacy. The other person is Sam Wilson. Because of course.

He looks relaxed if a bit stoic, and is leaning against the desk near the man. Tony suspects they were probably having some sort of conversation before their entrance interrupted them. Either that or Wilson’s hovering is making it very awkward for the other man to do his work.

He pushes off to approach them. “Your Majesty,” he says, a touch of friendly mockery to it that causes the closest thing Tony’s seen to a smile grace T’Challa’s face. It speaks to previous interactions that make Tony feel like the odd one out in a way he is used to but still doesn’t like. 

“Stark,” he says, turning to Tony after he shakes T’Challa’s hand. He doesn’t offer it to Tony, which is fine, of course. Tony’s holding the cat carrier like it’s a lifeline so it wouldn’t be practical anyway. 

“Falcon,” he answers.

Wilson nods toward the cat. “You know the Black Panther thing’s cultural and not because T’Challa here’s a secret cat lady.” 

Tony hadn’t even thought of that, which he’s not going to admit to. Instead he says, “Long story. A lady dies in Brooklyn and you end up being the proud father to a cat. You know how it is.” 

“Can’t say I do.” 

Before Tony can scramble together a response, T’Challa gracefully, thankfully, interrupts. “I am afraid I must leave. I just came to invite you to my home tomorrow. Be ready for 10 o’clock and a car will be here. We can talk then. Rest tonight.”

They make their polite-if-awkward goodbyes, and just like that Tony is passed from one man who he has no idea where he stands to another. And Wilson would be his third-to-last choice right now for the honour of escort, which is what he becomes when he waves off the man at the desk. “I’ll take him up. This his key?” he picks the card up off the desk. “You take it easy.” 

Tony has a brief concern for his bags that turns out to be unwarranted when they are somehow already waiting tidily for him in his room, which is almost terrifyingly efficient and sneaky considering he didn’t see anyone come through with them. 

The room is spacious and efficient in the way that any hotel room meant for an extended stay is. There’s a sitting area, and a huge bed, and all of the other amenities you’d expect from a hotel, including small fridge that, when he curiously opens it, is somehow stocked with things he would normally have in his own fridge. Which, again: Sneaky.

He closes the fridge door and turns to Wilson, who is annoyingly still hovering in the doorway. 

“I’ll tell Steve you’re here. You can meet him tomorrow. There’s a boardroom downstairs down the hall from the lobby,” he says, once he sees he has Tony’s attention. “I can’t do more than that, though. You’re on your own. Whatever you’re here to do.” 

Wilson clearly distrusts him, which is probably warranted after everything. Tony doesn’t trust Wilson either, or really himself. Tony doesn’t even know why Wilson’s there, hovering in his doorway. It would have been much easier to just ignore his arrival. 

“Okay, well, you don’t need to babysit me. You can go now.” And his flippancy gets no more than raised eyebrows before Wilson is gone, leaving Tony alone. He shuts the door, lets the cat out, and then doesn’t fall asleep until nearly 4am worrying about the next day.

 

 

“Are we the only ones here? You’ve just got a hotel full of Avengers?” Tony asks. It’s the same man at the front desk as the day before. He wonders if he ever leaves. Maybe he sleeps standing there. It’s 9:30 and nervous energy has made him incredibly early, since there’s nothing here for him to use as an excuse to be late instead. Well, there is, but also he wants to stay friendly with the king of an isolated nation that has graciously let him in to visit people he nearly killed only months before. Oh, life. So fun.

“It seems we are fully booked for the foreseeable future, yes,” the front desk guy answers diplomatically. 

“Have you had breakfast, sir?” he asks when Tony says nothing more, just taps on the desk irritatingly. 

“No,” he answers before he can think to lie.

“I will have some food brought for you,” he says, which Tony suspects is code for “Leave me alone and go eat some food in the corner.” 

So he does. And then he gets in a car and goes to T’Challa, who it turns out has little of importance to say but a lot of thinly veiled “Don’t mess with Barnes” to hide in there. And then they have lunch, which is awkward despite T’Challa being a very good host, and then he’s taken on some Wakandan Fun Tour because they both agree to make it look like Tony’s there for anything other than Hydra’s Favourite Assassin Arm and Mind Repair. Apparently tourism is a good alternative. 

He ends up back at the hotel around 5, hot and sweaty and gross, and is promptly accosted by Wilson. Again. Does he also just hang out in the lobby? Maybe him and front desk guy have a thing going on. 

Wilson shows him to the boardroom, and Tony wonders if Steve’s just been waiting there for hours until Tony returned. It’s fun to imagine, but probably not likely to be real. 

“I’ll leave you two to it,” Wilson says. He makes some exaggerated and confusing expression at Steve, who smiles faintly but goes promptly back to his stoic holier-than-thou standard expression the moment the door is closed after him.

Tony doesn’t know how he feels. He’s still nervous, incredibly so. Angry, a bit. Uncertain. 

Steve’s standing near the large windows, arms crossed, so Tony doesn’t sit either. He stays near the door, although takes a step in far enough to not look completely like he’s about to run. Just a little bit like he’s going to run. It’s a mystery now. 

The room is oddly silent once the door is shut, all of the outside noises blocked out. Steve says nothing, which, really it’s not like he expected much else, but it’s almost insulting. A greeting would be nice. A “Hey, Tony. I hate you and retract everything I said in that letter.” maybe, if that’s how this is going to go. 

“What’s up, Cap?” he says finally, and tries not to think about how the last time he actually spoke to Steve, they’d nearly killed one another. Well, he’d tried. Steve probably would have succeeded if he’d really wanted to. 

He just stares at him in response. His expression is unreadable. Well. Off to a good start.

So Tony answers for him: “Good. Great. Peachy. Glad to know the fugitive life is going well for you in merry old Wakanda.” 

He doesn’t even deign Tony’s words with a facial expression as a response. “What are you doing here, Tony?” he finally asks.

“Helping. Saving the day. Solving all your problems. Deus ex Stark.” 

Steve just looks annoyed, but at least it’s an emotion. “I said I’d sort it out. I’m working on getting everyone in the clear.” 

Tony’s pretty sure the answer to how that’s going is “Very poorly” but, more to the point, is that really what Steve thinks? That Tony’s just here to collect his things (people) and take off again? He feels a pang of hurt that this is what they’ve been reduced to - or maybe that’s how it’s always been, and he was the only one stupid enough to think otherwise. 

Tony wishes he’d had time to go back to his room first. At least then he could shove the shield at Steve and leave. He’s not sure whether to even bring it up now. It seems strange to do it without it in hand. Or maybe he’s just cowardly. He’s not exactly pleased that he got weirdly possessive over the thing in the first place, but for some reason giving it back has been a decision fraught with anxiety and uncertainty. 

So he ignores Steve, instead says, “I want to talk to Barnes.”

Steve stands straighter, immediately defensive. More than usual, anyway, since he’s always defensive. “Why? Last time you wanted to kill him.”

“I didn’t -” Tony cuts himself off, because now is not the time to try to explain himself. It might not ever be the time. He sighs. “I just need to talk to him first. I have plans for a new arm, and - and for the… memory problem,” he continues. How do you put “Turns into a mindless weapon after a few words” in a sensitive way? Lord if he knows. 

Steve looks sceptical. “What are your plans?”

“I’m not going into details with you until Barnes agrees. He deserves that much.”

“Why not?”

“Look, I’m not going to apologize. Don’t make me try to lie. I’m here because I want to be, all right? I could have everyone that hates you right now on you if I really hated Barnes that much. I saw the error in some of my conclusions, that’s all.”

“Stop it, Tony,” like Tony’s just joking or messing with Steve, and there’s something there - anger, yes, but also a flash of hurt and an underlying wariness that makes Tony pause. He clearly trusts no one to help, and Tony refuses to recognize the familiarity in that, shoves it aside to think about never.

So he reels it in with effort and takes a different tack. “What is your plan?” he asks instead. 

The shift in tone and question visibly catch Steve off guard before he can cover up the reaction. He’s now holding onto the edge of the table so hard that Tony’s surprised he hasn’t broken it. “I - We’ll figure it out.” 

“Who’s “we”, Steve? You and a country that isn’t yours? Are T’Challa’s people so bored that they have as much time to dedicate to this as I do?”

“I’m not totally useless.”

“God, you’re tiring.” Tony puts his hands in his pockets to refrain from lobbing the nearest heavy object at Steve’s stupidly stubborn head. “I’m not saying you are, but, shocker of all shocks, only one of us in this room has years of slogging through science and mechanics behind him and it’s not you. You’ve been holding back on us if you can build a biomechanical arm from scratch.” 

And there must be still a small, true part of Steve that still somehow trusts Tony because he relaxes the smallest amount at that for some reason. Tony has no idea what he said that got through. He wishes he did so he could do it over and over again every time Steve goes into Stubborn Perfect Mode. 

“Can I please just talk to Barnes? Let him decide or kill me or whatever it is he decides to do.” 

“He won’t -” Steve cuts himself off. He looks pained again, which, great, Tony can’t even keep him marginally relaxed and open to suggestion for longer than 30 seconds. “He’s not available right now.”

“When will he be?”

Steve shrugs. He looks remarkably lost now, and still hurt, but not by Tony, he doesn’t think. “I’ll talk to you later,” he says, abruptly, and then leaves Tony standing in a suddenly empty room with no idea what just happened.

 

 

Steve shuts himself in his room, because that’s what he does now. He runs and he hides. He tries not to think, not about Bucky or Tony or the faint little bubble of hope that maybe someone else knows how to make this better. 

He strips and then sits in the bathtub while it fills with hot water, trying to ward off the cold that sometimes goosebumps his skin at times like this, times when he’s a bit too close to the edge of his emotions. 

Sam finds him later, curled under all the blankets with his laptop playing the soothing sounds of David Attenborough talking about rhinos even though it’s only 7pm and too early for bed. He doesn’t comment, just pushes off his shoes and nudges at Steve’s shoulder. “Move. Let me see what the old white guy has to say about Africa.” 

The next morning, with Sam still fast asleep on the couch, Steve opens his door when he goes to get breakfast and finds two things.

One is his shield, propped carefully and benignly against the opposite wall. There’s no note, but it couldn’t have been anyone but Tony, and Steve wonders how long it’s been there, how he didn’t hear Tony sneak up to put it in position. He’s scared to touch it at first. He hadn’t missed it as much as he might have supposed and seeing it there, he’s not entirely sure how he feels about it. 

Luckily there is another thing to distract him, to put off the inevitable: a cat, various shades of brown and white, sitting right beside the shield like some sort of picture perfect moment that should be printed for a calendar. The cat is licking one paw and swiping it over her face. She barely acknowledges him when he takes a step forward to finally pick the shield up. The weight is familiar and right, and something in him feels a bit more sure to have it on his arm again, even if he wasn’t sure he wanted it back in the first place. It’s like settling into his favorite sweater, if he still had it and hadn’t left it stateside: comfortable, comforting, something he didn’t know he wanted until it was on.

The cat follows him back into the room and Steve lets her. She twines around his legs but he’s too distracted to really care. He can’t help but run one hand over the surface of the shield, feeling the slight grooves and the marks of T’Challa’s claws still down the front. He sets it carefully on the table when he finds he can’t place the feeling in his throat and isn’t sure he should hold it any longer, and then just looks.

“Huh,” Sam says when he sees the shield, stopping in his tracks. He looks thoughtful and still sleepy, but just says, “Good to see you have that back, man.” Then he continues on his way to the bathroom. Steve hears the shower turn on, so he gets him a pair of sweatpants and a shirt, if only because he knows Sam will complain about the way Steve’s clothes fit him and he could use that bit of normalcy. 

He goes to get them breakfast and when he brings it back to the room, Sam’s sprawled across the couch again, idly stroking the cat’s ears. “Cap, if this shirt fits me, it’s way too small for you,” he says, as soon as Steve’s in the door. He takes the offered coffee, then plate, and moves his feet out of the way so Steve can sit with him. They eat quietly, Steve’s mind going nicely blank as he stares at the shield. 

By the time they’ve finished eating, he’s decided: He will take Tony to Bucky.

 

 

Barnes is in a glass tube that makes the skin on his back feel like it’s crawling. Steve stands half in front of it like he can’t help but guard his friend still, even when the four Wakandan medical staff behind Tony could take him down with little effort even if he were here to do something awful to Barnes. Which he isn’t. Even if the sight of him still makes him a little angry. But just a little. A tad.

Tony places his eyes firmly on Steve because it’s easier than acknowledging the looming frozen Hydra-model super soldier behind him. And then has nowhere to begin. “So,” he starts, and drags the vowel out like that will provide him with a way to continue. 

Because this isn’t what he expected. He’s not sure what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. He’s not sure what to do when faced with someone who would rather go into a cryogenic state than deal with his own extreme loss of control. It says something, that, and while Tony almost expects himself to jump to the conclusion of Barnes’ selfishness and just-shove-it-aside-and-let-someone-else-fix-it-ness, that’s not it. And he doesn’t want to say it’s pity because it’s not, but it’s something. Sympathy, maybe. Empathy. Something-mpathy. It’s a thought, anyway, a feeling niggling in his chest that is uncomfortable and not what he wants to face. Guilt, even though this isn’t about him or how he’s dealt with his own grief. A weird sort of shaky ache that’s about himself, yes, but also Barnes, looking, when Tony dares glance again, calm and peaceful and utterly still, and Steve, looking the exact opposite, defensive and scared and hurt. 

And part of it is that this doesn’t help at all. It’s a slap-dash solution that does little. Big Scary Bad Dude With Activation Words could simply de-thaw the would-be assassin, say the words, and be on his merry killing way, should he somehow get through the intense Wakandan security and reclusiveness. It’s a process that’s been undertaken dozens of times over several decades since Barnes fell off that train. 

So maybe it’s that. It’s that this was based out of pure fear in the end, a distrust of himself that Barnes apparently couldn’t overcome and the sheer hope that maybe that delay, that oh-crap-he’s-frozen shock, would be enough to not let it happen again. 

Tony realizes he’s staring at Steve, who is somehow looking even more wary. One of the doctors shifts, and Tony thinks that they’ve all grown wildly protective over this guy, that it’s somehow maybe become a Wakandan Thing to protect James Barnes. 

“I -” He stops, clears his throat. “I thought maybe you meant Barnes was indisposed in some sort of Depression-era assassin PTSD way,” he says, which is weak and a bit stupid, but truthful nevertheless. 

“No,” Steve answers, stiff. Then: “Not yet anyway.” 

And it’s close enough to a dark joke that it makes the corner of Tony’s mouth quirk up just a bit. It’s not something he’d expect Steve to respond with but it serves to break the tension just enough for Tony to turn to the hovering Wakandans. “Can we have a moment? I promise not to destroy Barnes and his fancy science tube.” 

They all simultaneously look to Steve, who must nod or give some other sort of sign because they all leave without another word, which is creepy and weird but serves the purpose he wants.

“So,” Tony repeats, this time not dragging the sound obnoxiously. 

“Yeah,” Steve responds, and there’s not much more than that, is there? 

In the end he convinces Steve to convince the Wakandans to wake Barnes up so that Tony can then convince Barnes that he’s figured it out before his science-doctors have, even if that’s only because Tony has decades of the right sort of technology behind him and he probably could’ve done this months earlier if he had sucked it up. He’ll probably skip that part of the speech, though.

But he convinces Steve. He’s not sure how. It seems a miracle, what with Steve’s usual predisposition to say no to everything Tony does or says, and his massive, glaring hesitancy to do anything that might upset Barnes, where waking him up to talk to Tony probably ranks high on the list of things he wouldn’t want to do. 

Steve doesn’t leave abruptly this time, which seems like progress. They take the car back to the hotel together even, and it’s maybe a bit awkward and tense but it will probably never not be. They’ll get used to it. And if he essentially forces the cat to relax against him for comfort when he gets back to his room, well, no one has to know that.

 

 

Steve shuts the door to his room behind him, and then just stops. 

It’s quiet. It’s just after dinner, and he should go check in with the others, make sure things are still fine, ask Clint about his latest call to his family, check if Wanda left her room today, ask questions and make conversation. He doesn’t, though. He just decides to stop. 

He tries not to feel giddy with it, because he knows he shouldn’t. And he’s not, really. He’s just feeling a bit frantic on top of it all, above the wariness and fear and hope. But in just a few days he might have Bucky back. He yearns for it in the way you do anything that you want desperately but is out of reach. It’s different than the ache he still feels for Peggy, who he has barely paused to mourn properly but has been mourning for years in small, sustained pieces of it. It’s different than the missing of his mom, which pops up at unexpected moments but has had just past a decade to catch him less off guard. 

He can’t even possibly begin to make eloquent all of the things he feels about Bucky, and he doesn’t think he should ever, ever try. It’s too much, probably, the relief in all of those things, and Bucky doesn’t need the pressure of knowing. He’s changed. Steve wouldn’t expect anything else, but it’s clear that Bucky doesn’t want closeness in the same way. He asked for space, even when it’s just by running and Steve forcing himself to stop following, and Steve will give that to him. He probably shouldn’t even be waking him now, not when Bucky had agreed to one thing and Steve’s now tying him to something else, hope from a different direction, a direction that was out for revenge the last time Bucky saw him. 

He’s selfish, though. So he’s going to do this.

 

 

They settle on two mornings later at 9:30. There’s no real reason to delay it further, and luckily there isn’t much else going on to pull at the priorities of Bucky’s head doctor so she is able to get everything prepared in just a full day of work.

Of course, it doesn’t go that easily. 

“I need to go,” he says for what feels like the twentieth time. His lawyer, Ruth Mitra, is on the phone from London (why she’s even in London, Steve has no idea) despite this whole thing having started in the middle of the night for both of them. T’Challa has a room full of advisors, people Steve doesn’t know and is trying to trust anyway. They put him on edge, though, in the same way that most people do since DC. It’s that little niggling of never knowing, of having to be on guard _just in case_. It’s hours of being unable to relax, of subsisting almost entirely on coffee he doesn’t like and does nothing for him, trying to navigate the politics of a secluded country he barely understands while trying not to tip the scales too far either way - Wakanda has its priorities, and only some of those align with Steve’s. He needs to keep the UN and the US government happy so that the others can return home, but he also can’t give in entirely because he has to keep them out of Wakanda and away from Bucky. It’s beyond him, is really what it is. It’s not in his skillset, any of this. 

And the guilt was already welling up as soon as it was obvious this wasn’t going to be a quick fix. It’s just bad timing, is all. Steve had hoped the raucous over the Sokovia Accords would die down, and it has, but it keeps popping up when some angry politician uses it as a way to deflect from some other matter. Where is Captain America, where’s the Winter Soldier, what about those dangerous criminals that broke out of a high security prison, how come we’re not looking into T’Challa, he was involved, remember him, remember all of that, and on and on. 

Whatever they said to T’Challa this time must have made him think that the UN might actually send someone, either for that reason explicitly or for some other purpose that would get twisted. Wakanda’s good at keeping secluded but that can only happen if you don’t make people _too_ angry. 

Steve will fix it, though, somehow. So when his phone rang after barely 2 hours of sleep, he answered and he went, heart pounding from the adrenaline, because this involves him.

Sam joined them at just after 6, alerted by someone or another (T’Challa, probably, when Steve started to look a bit too restless, and he’d hate that if he weren’t grateful for Sam’s presence) and they’ve been here since, mostly because no one seems to want them to leave despite them not being entirely necessary. It’s the perception of the thing, really, the idea that Captain America doesn’t just want Wakanda to clean up his mess for him. 

“You good?” Sam asks, and Steve realizes he hasn’t spoken for far too long, that he just more or less zoned out on his lawyer, who luckily didn’t notice on account of the heated discussion she is having with a man Steve doesn’t recognize, one who has spent the last few hours scoffing at everything Steve’s said like he’s an idiot who doesn’t understand how the world works. He tries not to feel too much pleasure in how he’s been verbally torn down by Ruth.

“Yeah, I’m good.” He gives Sam a forced smile he undoubtedly sees through. 

“It’s almost 9:30,” Sam says, with a look, like he hasn’t noticed Steve watching the clock. “You’re not good.”

Steve shrugs, because he’s late now no matter what. There’s no way to make it on time, even if he left right at this moment, and arranging everything for another time would be too complicated to outweigh the selfishness. 

His hands are clenched so hard it hurts, but he can’t seem to relax them.

Sam grips his shoulder and then doesn’t let go, a steady point of contact amidst all the voices vying for their attention.

 

 

The process is no less disorienting just because the people doing it are kinder.

Someone’s gently trying to get him to move his fingers, his toes, something. It’s not what he’s used to after this. His brain is confused even as he tries to force it to think logically, to think through where he is, what he last remembers - and isn’t that a novelty in itself. It takes him a moment but he places it eventually: Wakanda. The hospital. The woman leaning over him with her hand resting on his right shoulder is his main doctor. He feels panic when he can’t place her name, and searches her face as if the answer will be there, willing something to jog his memory.

“Hello, James,” she says softly. “Can you tell me where you are? Let me hear you speak.”

He has to clear his throat before he can say anything, but forces the words out. “Wakanda. The university hospital.”

“Good. It is still 2016,” she says, letting go of him long enough to pick up a needle. “I am going to put an IV in, all right? Just to get you hydrated and back to form.”

She waits for his nod before she does it, her fingers still gentle against his skin. 

He finally looks around the room, and it’s empty. He feels a stupid sense of disappointment, because he’s not sure what he was expecting. Steve’s probably long gone by now, getting on with his life.

“Captain Rogers wished to be here but something urgent came up,” the doctor says, giving him a careful smile as if she knew that’s who he was seeking out. “He said he would come by as soon as he could.”

He nods again, looking down at his lap. 

“I will leave you to sleep. Your body will do its best recovering then.” She smiles again, intensely kind. “Try not to dislodge the IV.” 

She gives his shoulder one last pat before leaving. He still can’t remember her name.

 

 

He gets taken to the small hotel where everyone else is staying that night, when they can use darkness and fewer people around to their advantage and are less likely to be seen. T’Challa is there to escort him, and he greets Bucky with a warmth and politeness he isn’t sure he deserves. Steve isn’t, but he’s waiting in the hotel lobby. It’s the first time Bucky’s seen him and he can’t identify how he feels about it. No one’s quite explained to him what’s going on yet, whether someone figured something out to help, and it seems weird that Steve would be absent until now. It hurts, yes, but it’s also just confusing to not have all of the information at his disposal. It’s a shock to see him standing there, and a bit of relief mixed in. It’s tiredness more than anything that leads to his inadequate greeting, though. Steve obviously tries not to look hurt. 

His body is still healing from its flash freezing, none of the brutal Hydra efficiency to back it up and speed along the process, and once he shuts his door behind the other two men, he falls asleep again almost immediately.

He wakes up again, and the first thing he sees is a cat. 

There’s no reason for it, really, except that it’s out of place enough for him to latch onto. He hasn’t even moved yet but there’s a cat, perched on the edge of a table looking at him warily, and he stares back.

“Bucky?” and his eyes snap to Steve, who is looking wary as well, but in a different way than the cat. And then he looks back at the cat. 

“You weren’t supposed to wake me,” he says, and it comes out gruffer than he really means it to but he can’t take it back now that it’s out there.

Steve looks hurt momentarily, a quick flash that is there and gone but enough to make Bucky feel guilty. “We had to eventually. I - we can’t help if we didn’t.”

“It hasn’t been that long.”

“No, but - you - ” Steve fumbles over his words, finally seems to settle on, “Tony says - ”

“Stark? You’ve been talking to him?” And he can’t help how that hurts, how angry that makes him, because Stark had _tried to kill Steve._ He had hurt him. 

“Yes. He thinks he can - ”

Bucky cuts him off again. “He hates me.”

“He was hurting,” Steve supplies hesitantly, like that should excuse everything he did to them but Steve’s also not sure that it does.

“And you trust him?” 

“He’s our best chance.” Which doesn’t answer the question at all.

Bucky doesn’t answer, but he knows his silence is angry. He can’t help it. This isn’t what he expected. He isn’t sure it’s what he _wanted_. He doesn’t feel ready for it, but then again, would he ever? 

Steve tries a couple more times to engage him, and Bucky knows he should answer but he can’t seem to form the proper words around the simmering anger and nervousness and whatever else is sitting there heavy with guilt. 

Eventually Steve leaves, saying something about how Bucky probably wants to be left alone that Bucky only half hears around the static in his brain. 

The process is no less disorienting just because the people doing it are kinder.

The doctor’s last name is Soyinka. He remembers thinking it was beautiful.

The process is no easier simply because he went in there of his own choice.

Steve leaves. The cat stays.

 

“We woke up Bucky,” he says, almost as soon as Natasha picks up the phone. He can hear talking in the background in a language that he can’t place. Something Eastern European, maybe. 

“Why?” she asks, and it’s not accusatory, merely curious, even if Steve expects the former. 

“Tony. He showed up, says he’s got ideas, but he only wants to talk to Bucky about it.”

There’s a beat, then: “Do you think that’s a good idea?” And again, it’s merely curious, and there’s no judgment there but Steve wishes there were. It’s stupid, but he’s waiting for someone to tell him this is crazy, that it’s a stupid idea to wake up your cryogenically frozen formerly dead best friend so that he can talk about his lurking weapon status to someone who nearly killed the both of you not even a year ago. 

He runs a hand through his hair, stalks across the room to stand in front of the couch instead of the bed. “I don’t know,” he admits, after thinking about it for too long. “He won’t talk to me.” 

She hums thoughtfully, and then says, “Do you think your life will ever not be a mess?”

He laughs in a choked, pathetic sort of way. “It’s not looking great.” 

Later, he tries again to talk to Bucky but the door is locked and it’s silent inside the room. He stands in the hallway for almost ten minutes, uncertain, before finally going back to his own room. He has paperwork to go through for his lawyer anyway, part of the dragging process of getting the others back home that they’re moving forward despite the events of early that morning. It’s more productive this way. It’s fine. Bucky’s fine. 

He goes to his room and he tries to read through his emails but the legalese is too much for him to figure out with whatever it is that is clawing at his throat, so instead he simply stares at it as if he can somehow absorb it all and come up with some sort of magical solution. 

 

 

“Have you been here the whole time?” Tony asks Natasha when she walks in with Sam.

She answers with a shrug, taking a seat in one of the chairs in the far corner, leaving Tony looking bewildered. None of them choose to fill him in on the fact that no, she just arrived that morning, barely more than a day after Steve spoke to her on the phone. She hadn’t said she was coming but he was immensely grateful to see her anyway. 

“We probably should have Barnes here for this,” Tony points out, rocking back on his chair, once it’s obvious no one else is coming. It’s just the four of them, and Steve’s not entirely sure why they’re meeting if Tony hasn’t even talked to Bucky yet.

Steve doesn’t know how to explain Bucky’s absence, but thankfully Sam does before the silence stretches too long. “He needed some space.”

It seems like an inadequate response, but to Steve’s surprise, Tony accepts it without question. “Well I’m not going into detail until he agrees, but let’s just say that as your resident genius I can solve both his limb and brain problems.” 

“He’s not here to just - fix, or whatever it is you’re trying to do,” Steve can’t help but interject before Tony can really get going, annoyance lacing the words.

Tony has the audacity to look caught off-guard. “That’s not what I’m doing. You’re saying he didn’t get used to having a crazy robot arm? Those things are useful. I should know. I crafted a whole body to emulate that exact thought process.” 

“So you blow it off and then, what, are here out of some sort of guilt?” It’s undeserved and Steve regrets it instantly, but for some reason he can’t find it in himself not to be irritated. He thought he’d gotten past this. He’s already agreed to Tony talking to Bucky so it’s thoroughly useless to bring anything up now. 

“I can help,” Tony says, which doesn’t deny it and for some reason annoys Steve even more. 

“You can’t just throw money and technology at us and expect it to fix everything.”

Tony looks hurt, but it’s there and gone so quick that Steve’s not even sure whether it’s guilt or surprise he feels. 

“I can’t help it if that’s all I have to offer,” Tony responds, and there’s something there under the arrogance that seems a touch too affected, but Steve’s too on edge to parse it properly. 

“Bucky hasn’t agreed to it yet anyway, so stop acting like you’ve solved all our problems,” Steve snaps, which, again, probably undeserved but he seems utterly unable to control what falls out of his mouth together.

Tony’s eyes narrow, but Natasha breaks in just as he’s opening his mouth to respond.

“Break time. I’m taking Rogers,” she announces, and ignores Tony’s protest that they only just started. To her word, she grabs Steve by the upper arm and directs him out of the room, his chair scraping across the floor behind him. Anger and something too close to anxiety ripples out from her touch. He could get out of her grip if he wanted to but he lets her pull him along until they’re someone’s empty office. She lets go of him and then locks the door behind him. 

“What’s going on, Steve?” she asks, settling into position with arms crossed and feet at shoulder-width. It’s her no-nonsense stance, the one that means she’ll get a straight answer out of him no matter how long it takes. Her gaze is steely and direct. 

And he gives in without meaning to, without any fight because he’s tired of fighting. “I don’t know,” he says, sounding frustrated even to his own ears. “I wish I did. I feel like I’m going to fly apart, like it’s just - ” he makes a vague, fluttering motion with his hands that means nothing at all. It’s inadequate and pathetic and he feels immediately ashamed that the honesty slipped out

Her gaze softens, but her answer is blunt. “You need to get it together. This isn’t productive.”

“I know,” he answers. “I _know_.” He knows too well. His chest is tight and his body thrumming. He feels the irrational urge to break something, like that will somehow hold him together. “I just... I need to do this right for everyone and I don’t know how.” 

“You can start by letting us do some of it. Everyone’s well-being is not solely on you, Steve.” 

“I missed you,” he admits, quiet, strained. It’s not what he should be saying but it’s what he says anyway.

He’s answered with silence, and for a moment he worries he’s done the wrong thing, that he’s overstepped. But then she moves forward, gestures him toward her and pulls him in. It’s awkward in its angle but comfortable, comforting, her hands light and strong against his back and left shoulder. Something releases in a deep breath, and he turns his face into her, gripping maybe harder than he should.

He can’t help but remember the last time, in that church for a funeral he knew was coming but never wanted to attend. Peggy, the one tenuous hold he had to his past until Bucky came and disappeared again. And this isn’t about that, about Peggy or Bucky or any of it, but it is about it as well. It’s Natasha, and the first one of them all he felt might be an actual friend after years of claiming only acquaintances and colleagues. It took ages, but they got there, neither of them quite willing to trust until it turns out they could anyway. 

“It’ll get better. We’re figuring it out,” she says eventually, and he’s so grateful she doesn’t try to pull away despite him holding on for too long, and that somehow she just gets it without him having to come up with the words. She says it into the air over his shoulder, shifts her grip only a little. 

He nods because he _wants_ to believe it even if he’s not sure he’s there yet. He gives himself a moment and then breathes out again, heavy, before finally pulling away. Her hand lingers on his forearm.

“Will you be all right?” she asks. There’s no judgment there.

“Yes,” he answers, because he will be. He has to be.

She nods. “Let’s take the rest of the night off, okay? Just a bit of a break?” 

He wants to protest but he’s suddenly so tired he’s not sure he’s not sure he could form a proper argument even if he put all of his effort into it. So he just looks at her, not sure what exactly to say, but she must see everything he’s feeling there. She squeezes his arm once before letting go but staying close. 

“Come on. We’ll go tell the others and then get something to eat.”

 

 

When Natasha and Steve return, Steve looks a bit better, if not physically then at least mentally. He looks utterly beat, everything else aside. HIs eyes are bright with exhaustion, and Tony can’t help but wonder when he last slept, what with his own arrival, the unexpected Indian adventure, Barnes’ de-thawing, and everything else. He’s spent enough time working with the man to know it happens little at the best of times. 

Natasha’s hovering close behind him at his right shoulder, the two of them barely separated by air. Not for the first time he wishes he had more insight as to what exactly happened in DC. While he doesn’t think they’re together, there’s a closeness there that he knew he couldn’t touch even when Natasha chose his side on the Sokovia Accords. He tries not to be jealous but, well, despite what Steve says, he knows where a lot of their loyalty sits. 

“Steve and I are going to go eat.” she says. She doesn’t invite any of them along. “I suggest you all do the same. Get some sleep. It’ll help us all think clearer. We’ll reconvene in the morning.” 

Wilson lets out a deep breath once they leave, slumping back into his chair. He rubs one hand over his head. “God, this is stressful. It’s like we’re trying to navigate world peace or something.” 

“Don’t look at me,” Tony says, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m just trying to help.”

“I know you are, man,” and it’s said so sincerely that Tony’s actually touched. “Steve’s just… He’s got a lot to sort through. He’ll get there though.” 

Tony just nods, because that’s the understatement of the year and not something even he’s willing to toss off with a joke. 

He sighs again, and seems to deflate a bit before pushing himself up out of the chair. “Right. I’m going to get some sleep while I can. You’ll do the same?”

He meets Tony’s eyes with a directness that he’s stopped expecting from any of them. “I’ll try, anyway,” he answers with a truthfulness somehow coerced out of him.

“Good. That’s all I can ask.” Wilson barely hesitates before clapping him on the shoulder. He lets go with a squeeze. “Try to do it sooner rather than later.”

And with that he’s gone, leaving Tony alone in a room full of empty chairs and the soft glow of the computer screen.

 

 

Natasha orders for him, tucking them into a corner of the otherwise empty hotel restaurant. Thankfully no one else comes in as Steve eats in record speed, eager to be out of there and the feeling of paranoia at his back in what should be a safe place. He only slows down when he notices Natasha herself isn’t eating. He looks at her in reproach but says nothing, and she raises one eyebrow in amused response but obediently picks up her fork.

She doesn’t leave even when they reach his room. He falls asleep for the first time in what feels like weeks, his forehead pushed against the outside of her thigh, her fingers brushing through his hair as she quietly taps at a tablet propped up on the bend of her other leg.

 

 

“Rhodey. Rhodester. Rhodes.”

“You’re not drunk, are you?” 

“God, I wish. No.” Tony flops onto his bed, the phone slipping slightly through his hand. He readjusts, leaves one arm slung across his eyes to block out the light.

“Good.” Tony hears clanging like the sounds of a kitchen.

“Are you cooking? Isn’t it 4 there?” 

“I’m with my parents. The family’s coming over tonight.” 

“Oh! Tell Ruby I say hello.”

“It’s Tony,” he hears, the words directed to someone else.

“Hello, sweet Tony!” he hears yelled across a room.

“Your mother is the only person who thinks I am sweet.” 

“You’ve somehow fooled her.”

He hears what sounds like a reprimand in the background, and Rhodey huffs laughter into the phone. It makes Tony relax marginally. It’s normal, and proof that life can be pleasant for at least one of them. 

“Just a second,” Rhodey says, and there’s the sound of shuffling and then the scrape of wheels across the floor. He still gets tired easily despite all of Tony’s modifications to the exoskeleton and is obviously trying to reserve his energy for the family visit that day. Despite all of Tony’s attempts at coercion, he still uses the boring old wheelchair at times, citing some excuse about it being a better workout for the arms or something. 

Tony tries not to let the sound of it bother him too much. He knows it’s far from his fault, but like everything, the guilt sometimes creeps up anyway. (“It’s not all about you,” he can hear his therapist reprimand, the straightforward git.)

The other sounds cut off with the click of a door. “All right,” Rhodey says. Tony pictures him settling back, inasmuch as you can settle in an ugly chair on wheels. “How’s Africa?”

“Hot. Stuffy. Everyone’s so serious.” 

“That might be the looming diplomatic crisis.”

“Nah, it’s just their personalities. There won’t be a crisis. Cap and His Majesty are on it,” he says, injecting more flippancy than he really feels.

“Rumour says Steve isn’t giving in as much as they want.” 

“Yeah, well, I’m working on that. It’s Barnes. He’s just… complicated.” He trusts the security of his phone but it isn’t really something he wants to convey from a distance. 

“Murdering people for decades will do that to a guy.”

“The kid’s had a rough time. Both of them,” Tony says, weirdly offended on Barnes’ behalf, which is a surprise and a half. He should analyze that maybe.

“Well that’s a change in tune,” Rhodey says, like he’s read Tony’s mind.

“I know. It’s just…” He digs the heel of his hand into his brow bone like that can get rid of the lurking migraine.

“Have you talked to him?” Rhodey asks, his voice gentling.

“No. He’s been unavailable.”

The other man makes an inquiring sound, like he knows that there’s more to the story that he can’t ask about right now. Tony misses his presence so much at that moment that he’s not quite sure what to do with it. It’s familiar, though, missing someone.

After a beat, Tony ventures, “Do you ever feel like you’ve ruined things?”

“You weren’t in the wrong, Tony. We’ve had this conversation before.”

“I know, but I think I was. Where Barnes was concerned anyway.” 

“He killed your parents.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he chose to.” No one who wanted to do that would willingly choose being frozen in a tube for an indeterminate amount of time over living a life that included the way Steve looked at Barnes. There’s a thing there that Tony’s not going to be the one to point out, but it makes him yearn for Pepper in a way that he’s not sure is ever going to end.

“So what, you’re full of forgiveness now?”

“No. Yes, maybe. I don’t know. I’m still angry at him.” 

“Good. He deserves it.”

“I know.” He pushes harder at his head. It still doesn’t help. “Seeing Steve, though…”

“What about him? However he is now doesn’t change that he put a lot of people in danger.”

“He’s still a stubborn ass,” Tony says instead of everything else he wants to. 

It startles a laugh out of Rhodey, though, which is all that really matters. 

The cat chooses that moment to jump straight onto Tony’s stomach, which makes him exhale heavily with a “oof.” 

“Don’t do that, cat,” he says. She doesn’t listen, just sits with one paw digging into the skin just below his bottom left rib. 

“That animal’s still around?”

“She wanders. I think she’s taken to Wakanda. Or at least this particular hotel in Wakanda.”

“She might want to stay.”

“Nah, she’s a Manhattanite at heart,” Tony responds to cover the strange little pang that notion sends through him. “Aren’t you, darling?” he scratches behind her ear and she leans into his hand hard enough to practically topple herself sideways. He smiles, so that’s something.

“She’s from Brooklyn,” Rhodey says, which Tony chooses to ignore.

“You should get back to your parents,” he says reluctantly instead. It’s a nice little bit of selflessness, he thinks. Rhodey doesn’t need him ruining his whole day, after all, with all his dour thoughts. Besides, he’s got a cat now. Sort of. When she’s around, which has been less and less as time passes. 

It takes another few minutes to get through their goodbyes before hanging up. Tony gets up long enough to turn off the light and shed his clothes, falling into bed in just his underwear. The cat arranges herself over his feet as if to hold him in place. It still takes him ages to fall asleep, but she’s a pleasant warmth that keeps him settled. 


	2. Chapter 2

Barnes is still incommunicado after two days so Tony decides to take matters into his own hands, which is maybe the opposite of what he said he was going to do but it’s not like he’ll _start_ anything before speaking to Barnes. And they’re on a limited timeline with all the looming political whatnot over their heads, which leaves little time for brooding assassin melodrama. So he goes to find Lang, the jerk.

His room is all the way across the hotel, which means they probably should’ve run into one another at some point but somehow have not because apparently that small distance is enough. Or everyone’s avoiding Tony.

He knocks. Barton opens the door, which, okay. Maybe wrong room. Great. Just who he wanted to see.

“I’m looking for Lang,” he says, instead of a greeting. 

Barton glares.

Lang says, from somewhere beyond the door, “I’m here! Right here.” He saunters into view, his apparent cheerfulness in direct contrast to Barton’s continued glare. 

“Wow, Tony Stark himself looking for me.” He holds out his hand. “Big fan. At least, you know, before you and your buddies beat me up and threw me in jail.” 

Which is fair enough, but the words are offset by Lang’s continual good cheer so Tony takes his hand to shake anyway. 

“Cool. Anyway, how would you like to help me build an arm? Barton, budge over so I can get through the door.” 

He pushes past Clint, who keeps glaring but says nothing. Isn’t this fun. At least he shuts the door behind Tony, and then falls onto a chair to continue his glaring from a more comfortable position.

“An arm? For Barnes, you mean?”

“You’re an engineer. They trust you. They don’t trust me. So you’re going to vouch for me. Watch over it all, whatever.” He waves a hand. “Once Barnes agrees, we’ll start. Capiche?”

“Uh, sure. Capiche. Aren’t you the one who ripped it off him?”

Tony winces at that description, and tries to cover it by taking three steps further into the room. “An unintended side effect,” he says, waving it off. It’s not exactly a lie. “I sent you the plans. Check your computer,” he barrels on before anyone can question him further.

“Great. Sure,” Lang agrees, amiable. Christ, he annoys Tony and he doesn’t even know why.

“Well, this has been fun. I’ll keep you posted,” he says, backing toward the door again. It probably wasn’t even worth coming in. “Barton,” he says, nodding at Clint. 

“Bye,” he responds, lacing the single world with enough derision to fuel a jet, if that’s what jets were fueled by.

And Tony flees. If nothing else, at least he’s accomplished something. But unfortunately he still has one more visit to make. 

 

 

There’s a knock at the door, startling Steve out of his stupor. They’re watching some old movie where James Cagney’s putting on improbable movie prologues. The jarring soundtrack is comforting despite itself, but it’s really Wanda who loves the era. She can’t always keep up with the different intonation and sometimes has to ask him to translate, but she looks enthralled anyway. It’s worth it, taking this time away, to give her the company. 

He pushes himself off the chair to go answer the door, Wanda pressing pause on the movie. The cat curled in her lap meows low in her throat, and Wanda places a hand on her back as if to settle her. He still doesn’t know where the cat came from, but sometimes she follows him around for hours until going back to wherever it is she lives, and he finds he can’t complain and is maybe, just a bit, getting attached despite himself.

He opens the door to Tony, who actually groans. “God, fuck, does no one actually spend time alone around here? I’m looking for Maximoff.”

“I can leave,” Steve offers, uncomfortable at the greeting, his eyes flicking between the two of them. It’s clear Tony doesn’t want him there, which he can’t blame him for after the last time they spoke, but he’s not leaving if Wanda isn’t comfortable with it. 

“No, it’s fine.” Tony waves him off. “I’ll come back later.” 

He spins on his heel and stalks back down the hall before Steve can protest. The cat runs after him, a blur of fur that narrowly misses colliding with Steve’s legs. As Steve watches, Tony leans down to pick the cat up before continuing on his way without a backward look.

 

 

Tony must catch Wanda alone at some point, or maybe she seeks him out, because she shows up at Steve’s door later that evening. 

“He wants me to help counteract the code words,” she says slowly, carefully, watching Steve’s face like she’s unsure how he will react. She doesn’t even have to say a name for Steve to know what she’s talking about, and he’s instantly so angry that it catches him off guard. It’s on behalf of Bucky, and behalf of Wanda, and behalf of the whole situation that makes any of this necessary.

He reigns it in so it doesn’t seem like he’s angry at her, though. “We agreed to talk to Bucky first.” 

“He wanted to make sure I would be okay with it before bringing it up with him,” she says, and that helps counteract his anger almost immediately. It’s such a whiplash of emotions that it almost overwhelms him for a moment. 

He takes a breath, setting aside his own feelings, and then says, “And are you?”

“I think I am,” she answers. Steve searches her face for any sign that she’s lying, or doing it out of some sort of feeling of obligation to any of them or the notion of doing good. She looks nothing but honest, though, and maybe a bit uncertain. 

“You don’t have to,” he says anyway.

“I think I do.” She meets his eyes, gives him a small sort of smile. “It is the right thing for Sergeant Barnes.”

He nods, swallowing. He really needs to get his emotions under control.

“And you? Are you fine with me helping?” 

“Of course I am. I trust you.” He forces her to keep meeting his eyes, trying to convey how much that is true.

“It will not be just me. Tony also has his…” She waves a hand at her face. “Glasses thing. Together, we can maybe help.” 

Steve has no idea what she’s talking about because none of them have been fully filled in on the details. Steve can’t even begrudge Tony that, since it’s coming from a genuine place where he wants Bucky to be on board with it all before anyone can sway his own decision. Already, with Bucky’s extended absence, that plan is dwindling day by day. 

“I trust you,” he repeats. 

She smiles again, and reaches up and places the tips of her fingers gently on his cheek. “Thank you.” 

There’s nothing to say to words said so sincerely, but thankfully she doesn’t seem to expect a response. She drops her hand again and turns to hook her arm through his. “The others are downstairs for supper. Come. We will join them.” 

 

 

Bucky spends almost five days shut in his room. He only opens the door to get the food left by someone from the hotel. Steve comes by an excessive 28 times, but only speaks 10 times to try to coax Bucky out or to let Steve in. He ignores him each time. It’s not to be cruel, even though it undoubtedly seems that way. He just needs time. 

Wilson stops by three times and Romanoff twice, and Stark once on day two. The latter says very little. He just says, “Here you go, Barnes,” through the door, and then slides a folder underneath. It takes 13 hours before Bucky feels like he can go pick it up. It’s plans. Plans for a new arm, and plans for some machine with a stupid acronym that Bucky’s not entirely sure he can trust given his previous experiences with memory modification. He reads each page carefully, though. He doesn’t want to feel hope. He doesn’t trust Stark. The only note from him in his own words is at the very top of the first page: “We can talk about it when you have time.” Like it’s that Bucky’s social engagements are too plentiful for him to talk to Stark, not that he’s in his room avoiding them all. 

He finds a tablet in a desk drawer, and thankfully the Internet doesn’t require a password he’d have to spend time hacking through. He researches. 

He spends hours reading about the brain and memory in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to before. He only has to stop twice, once to pace the room and another time because he can’t get the feeling of the arm restraints of the chair off his body. He showers, letting the water run so hot it turns him bright red and makes him feel a bit faint. Then he picks the tablet back up again and goes back to it.

The same cat from the hospital room shows up for the first time on the second day. She explores the room while Bucky watches warily, and then scratches at the door to be let out again. Bucky watches her go before shutting the door with a quiet click. He doesn’t expect to see her again, but then she comes again later that day and sprawls across Stark’s folder on the floor like it’s a mark of the best spot on the floor to laze. Then she falls asleep on his lap as he sits doing nothing. He doesn’t know what to do with her so he lets her stay. 

She returns once on day three and spends a few minutes meowing loudly at all the corners of the room before joining him on the bed with the tablet and the folder of papers spread out everywhere. They crunch under her feet as she prowls before lying down across them again. He doesn’t push her off. 

It’s late on day four (or early on day five, depending) and he’s standing in front of the door clutching the folder and trying to convince himself to open it. It’s too late, probably. Everyone normal should be asleep. He should wait. He should put it off. He doesn’t know if he can put it off. He might never go if he does. 

Then there’s a scratching at the door that is too low down to be anyone but the cat, and he can’t ignore her so he opens it. She pushes in, which opens the door further, and it seems like the sign he needs. He leans down to pick her up before she can get far, and then, holding her to his chest, he goes to the staircase. 

 

 

The knock on his door jerks Tony out of the half-sleep he had been doing over the desk. He’s confused for a moment, because - and the clock supports that he’s not wrong - it’s 1:17am. His next response is panic, because the only reason someone would be visiting this late is if something had gone wrong.

He swings open the door with more force than is really necessary, and comes to a grinding halt when he finds Barnes there. He is, to make the picture even stranger, clutching Emma, who looks utterly unperturbed by situation and the folder under Barnes’ arm that is jabbing into her back. She looks at Tony as if to ask why he’d doubt she belonged anywhere else, and then up at Barnes, whose chin she nudges with her nose. 

“You’ve got my cat,” he blurts, words entirely born of surprise and lingering adrenaline.

Something eerily close to panic crosses Barnes’ face before he shoves Emma at Tony. “I didn’t mean - She just comes by sometimes.” Tony takes her mostly so she doesn’t tumble down his front and to the floor. She immediately jumps out of his arms, landing with a disgruntled meow before disappearing behind him into the room. The traitor, abandoning him in his time of need.

He looks awful, and Tony isn’t sure if it’s that or just time passing that leaves him with a surprising lack of anger. He thought his first conversation with Barnes would go poorly, and it’s not that this is going great but it’s at least in a different sort of way. The shadows under his eyes are so dark that it looks a bit like he’s on the healing end of two black eyes, and his skin is pale and offset by his straggly dark hair. 

“I’m sorry. I’ll go,” Barnes says, and Tony’s reaching out to catch his arm before he really thinks the motion through. The other man freezes, and Tony lets go like he was electrocuted. Fuck, that’s not what he meant to do. Boundaries, Tony. Keep them, especially around formerly brainwashed super assassins.

“No, don’t. What did you need?” he tries to make himself sound open and friendly, and not like any of the emotions spinning around in him. 

Barnes is tense still, but he does turn back. He shifts the folder, which has somehow remarkably stayed in place, into his hand. “I want you to explain this to me,” he ventures hesitantly. “I can’t - some of it is new technology. I can’t research it on my own.” 

Tony’s surprised that Barnes came directly to him for this. As far as he knows, he hasn’t spoken to anyone else first. Not that they’d necessarily tell him if he had. So maybe he has talked to someone. Maybe all of them. But also maybe he could have avoided the whole Lang step. TBD on that one. “Yeah, I know,” is what he says instead of any of that. “I invented the thing. But sure, okay, we can do that.” 

Barnes looks relieved, and then suddenly wary again. “You hate me,” he says, blunt. 

Tony doesn’t shy away from it. This is too delicate to beat around the bush, as much of an oxymoron that is. He senses Barnes is testing the waters. So Tony shrugs, tries to look nonchalant but still serious and man, this whole thing is like a case study in trying to navigate awkward emotional high waters. “I’m willing to move on if you are.” 

Barnes studies his face, and whatever he finds there must not be entirely disagreeable. He just nods, and then pushes past Tony and into his room.

“Okay, well, I guess we’re starting this tonight. Coffee? Let me make some coffee.” And he shuts the door after him.

 

 

The next night he is back in his own room. He thinks about Romania, where he finally stopped moving long enough to start to think straight. About how three weeks before Steve showed up and everything fell apart, he had wanted to go to him first. How it was turning into a physical ache not unlike the present, where he could remember _everything_ , and everything included the comfort he used to find there and the yearning he had felt for it at times. How it had helped, sometimes, and he wanted nothing more than to have some sort of relief now. 

So he goes to Steve. 

It’s late, just after 3am, and Steve’s in bed but awake. He’s curled on his right side, away from the door, arms bent up and one hand resting on his own hair. His breathing doesn’t change and he barely moves, only enough to look back at Bucky before looking away again. He wonders precisely what characteristic Steve used to know it was him. Was it his footfalls, or his breathing? Or was it like it was with Bucky, where he somehow just _knew_ , knew when Steve was nearby even if there were obstructions, knew through the walls of his bedroom when Steve hesitated outside, silent, before moving along. Lighter on his feet than he ever used to be, but still somehow familiar.

That cat’s in the far bottom corner of the bed, and like Steve she raises her head only long enough to look at him and guage him not a threat before closing her eyes again. He’s surprised to see her there. She seems to be everywhere. He wants to touch her, feel the softness and comfort of her warmth, but that would mean disturbing both her and Steve so he doesn’t. Instead he sits down on the edge of the bed at Steve’s back. 

Neither of them say anything for a moment. He can practically feel Steve trying to form words, to put together whatever he thinks is adequate. In the end, he only asks to wall in front of him, “Is everything all right?”

Bucky nods even though Steve can’t see it. He doesn’t say, “All I can think about is all the people we’ve killed.” or “Losing control again is a constant, aching worry and that’s why you were supposed to leave me.” or “What I want most is to be near you.” Instead he says, “Yes. I’m fine.”

Steve thankfully doesn’t pry further even though it’s not normal for Bucky to show up in his room in the middle of the night. He looks exhausted even in the dim light of the window, and Bucky wonders how much that has to do with easing up on his usual barely-restrained anxious inquiries.

He makes a sudden decision then and decides not to question it. He toes off his shoes, leaving them aligned carefully beside the bed. Then he lies down slowly, giving Steve a chance to protest. He doesn’t, though, just tenses minutely. He doesn’t look back. He’s holding himself absolutely still, the only change the one hand now clenched against the sheet. 

Bucky doesn’t touch him. He leaves space between their bodies where he’s turned on his side toward Steve. He watches as the line of his side slowly, incrementally relaxes. After what feels like an hour but can’t actually be that long, Steve hesitantly rolls until he’s facing Bucky. He has to take a moment to rearrange the blankets since Bucky’s holding one side of it tight with the weight of his body, but eventually he settles. And then he meets Bucky’s eyes.

Neither of them say anything, but eventually Bucky reaches out and, largely to break the tension, places his index finger very gently on Steve’s nose but says nothing. Steve huffs a laugh and pushes it away, and when his hand settles again, Bucky (bravely, he feels, though he’d never admit to the weird undercurrent of terror) places his hand on Steve’s. Steve gives Bucky a slightly watery smile, and turns his hand so he can grip Bucky’s back. It’s strong, on this side of too much, but they stay that way for a long time, until Steve finally falls asleep and Bucky’s left with his thoughts.

 

 

Working with Barnes is surprisingly easy.

He wants to be involved in it all, even though sometimes he goes a bit vacant like the information is too much. In those times Tony tries to nudge Emma toward him, because her touch is apparently fine to pull him out of it and Tony expects his would not be. She otherwise watches them work, which mostly means watching Tony bang around in his makeshift hotel-room-turned-lab that T’Challa thankfully agreed to supply because smuggling all this in without someone noticing would have been a nightmare and a half even for him. The technology isn’t nearly what his own is, if he says so himself. Although he begrudgingly will admit it’s pretty good and okay, he’s lying, the Wakandans are amazing at this stuff and probably could’ve done it all without him with enough time and, in fact, had already started on it a bit and Tony’s incorporated some of it into his own plans but only their lead scientist knows and no one else needs to. Except Barnes, who gets to know everything.

What’s important, really, is that he has the things he needs to build the arm and everything else, and that he’s able to project the model of the arm up in 3D so that Barnes can manipulate the image and inspect every single piece. Tony’s not sure how much he understands, but he only asks the occasional question and those he does ask usually indicate he has at least some knowledge, so he’s probably doing all right for himself.

He thought it’d be more difficult. Anyone would think that. But it turns out that Barnes is quiet, which Tony appreciates while working, and doesn’t complain about the music he turns on to avoid the awkward silences resulting from said quiet, and he doesn’t ask Tony about his life, Howard, or any of their past interactions that may or may not have resulted in the loss of the arm they are currently trying to build.

BARF and working with Wanda is more delicate than the arm. Barnes goes vacant more often, which tends to lead to Wanda looking concerned, and the combination of the two is something Tony knows will get him in Big Trouble with Steve. He’d do it all on his own except than then Barnes gets twitchy about not being in on it, and that’s possibly worse. So they soldier on. And it’s not bad. Steve only looks at him disapprovingly once, and doesn’t even say anything. It’s fine. Progress is being made, and there’s a cat to distract them all, and he doesn’t trust it can keep going this well, and it’s fine.

 

 

It doesn’t take long for him to establish a routine.

He wakes up early, either because his brain forces him to from a nightmare or because that’s simply when he wakes up. It depends on the night. But he wakes up early. He exercises what he can in his room, then showers, then gathers breakfast and eats alone at the tiny table in his room. Then he goes to Stark, who will catch Bucky up distractedly on whatever he’s thought of overnight, and then will leave him to his own devices except when he needs something - measurements for the arm, to know whether he ever expects to be using a crossbow, how often he needs to dive underwater. What time he leaves depends on the day, but usually the cat follows him out so Bucky goes to find Steve, because Steve likes the cat but won’t admit it or ever seek her out, and she gets him to relax marginally. They’re a good pair, he thinks, him and the cat, at getting Steve to relax marginally. Getting him to relax completely is too much to ask for. He might need a whole parade of cats for that. Kittens. A whole slew of kittens who also solve all Steve’s problems and fix Bucky. Instead he does what he can with one cat for the former and Stark for the latter.

The thing is, Bucky knows Steve well but he doesn’t know all of this new Steve. His knowing is based off memories, the bits he could glean from the Internet and media, and the tiny amount of time they spent together in what amounted to a high stress situation. (He’s not entirely sure this isn’t still a high stress situation, but at least no one’s currently trying to kill them, unless Stark has that up his sleeve.) He already knows there are blanks to fill in, glaring ones that make up this Steve. This Steve whose confidence is only surface-level, who picks at his food, who spends way too much time on his phone with someone who must be his lawyer, whose typing on his laptop every evening is a stream of near-constant clicks that set Bucky on edge enough to send him back to his own room.

He follows him one day because Stark’s just come off three days with very little sleep and Wilson made him take the day off, which means Bucky gets the day free as well. He figures knowing Steve’s routine might help him know this Steve. This Steve is pretty boring, but also immediately shows a disregard for the rules, which is unsurprising and utterly routine for him. He goes for a run with Barton and Wilson before the sun’s even up, which Bucky is absolutely certain he’s not supposed to follow them on because it takes him outside the hotel grounds, and is 90% sure Steve’s not supposed to do either. He’s pretty conspicuous. They see no one though, and Bucky thinks it’s more of a social thing than anything because the pace they run at can’t be great exercise for Steve, so he decides not to voice his concerns. 

They are joined for breakfast by Lang, who looks sleep-rumpled, and then stay long enough for Maximoff and Romanoff to join them as well. Steve’s quiet but smiles a few times, and he’s comfortable enough that he isn’t monitoring the room as closely as he does in public. It’s nice to watch, almost. He smiles softly at Maximoff. He doesn’t tense when Barton claps a hand to his shoulder. He lets Romanoff lean in close to say something into his ear, which he laughs at. He absentmindedly moves food from his plate to Wilson’s, even though it was a buffet, which means Steve picked up something he doesn’t like explicitly for that reason. Bucky almost wishes he could join them, that he’d ever be comfortable enough for that, that they’d ever be comfortable enough around him for that. 

Steve ducks out before of the others to go talk to T’Challa, and the soundproofing on the innocuous office in the hotel is good enough to be suspicious. He refrains from scaling the wall to test the window. It seems like a step too far, and besides, there’s the possibility it would give him away.

Which proves a moot point not long later. As he’s waiting the cat joins him, which is nice, sort of, but also bad because it’s hard to go undetected with a cat that doesn’t know how to spy. And sure enough, shortly after the door opens he hears, “Bucky?”

He leaves the shelter of the room he was in, and tries to look casual and not like he has been following Steve all morning. T’Challa’s gone, just disappearing around the corner to the staircase, which at least makes it a bit better and less awkward. 

“Hi,” he says, for lack of anything else. The cat has trotted over to Steve, meowing in greeting and being, Bucky will admit, kind of cute about it. Steve lets his fingers dangle and she stands up on her back legs long enough to rub her face against them. 

“Hi,” Steve echoes. He looks tense despite the cat, but what else is new. The cat can’t solve everything. He smiles a bit at Bucky anyway, so he takes that as a win even though his day of following has just been ruined. 

“Wanna go find cat food?” he asks, which is sort of a stupid activity but the only one he can think up quickly. It definitely doesn’t have to be a two-person thing, but there’s no reason it can’t be.

“Sure,” Steve answers, like it’s a totally normal thing to suggest they do. He leans over and picks up the cat, letting her settle in the crook of his arm, purring against his chest. Bucky has the odd urge to envelop them both and hold them close. He resists. He instead turns on his heel and leads the way. 

 

 

Steve’s standing arms-crossed near the windows, a mirror of the first time Tony saw him in this country. The rest of them sit at the table like normal, relaxed people who aren’t radiating tension.

“The UN’s on our backs,” Steve announces with no nice, easy introduction into the conversation. 

“What else is new?” Clint grumbles. Tony wonders if he’s always been this grumpy, or if it’s being away from his family for so long. He suspects the latter, but, well, that’s depressing to contemplate. 

Lang nods his agreement, like Clint’s said something profound.

“They want to talk,” Steve continues, ignoring him.

Barnes sits up straighter, and it’s then that Tony can finally place what’s so off about Steve. He looks _uncomfortable_ , like he’s been asked to make a speech in front of two thousand people at a moment’s notice. Or, because he’s Captain America and could probably pull that off spectacularly, like a stranger’s just done something particularly unsavoury and he’s trying to figure out a polite way to tell them off because the Queen is watching. Although, again, Captain America. He would probably be fine at that. God, this man.

“No,” Barnes says, and the single word contains so much defiance and anger that everyone but Romanoff looks at him in surprise. 

But then the ball drops for Tony and _oh_. 

“I - they are promising -”

“ _No_ ,” Barnes repeats with somehow even more force, and Tony’s incredibly glad he’s not the one going face-to-face with him. He can just sit back and enjoy the incredibly uncomfortable situation that makes him want to leave the room.

“Bucky, we need to -” He sounds both desperate and the type of angry that only comes from defensiveness. 

Barnes cuts him off again. “We don’t _need_ to do anything for them.” Which Tony is pretty inclined to agree with.

“They’re getting more suspicious by the day,” and there’s a pause, brief, like he expects Barnes to interrupt again, but he doesn’t so Steve continues, “They’re 90% sure you’re here. T’Challa’s holding them off -” His eyes flick to T’Challa and then back to Barnes, quick. “- but they won’t stop, Buck. They want someone to blame.” He sounds pained. “I’d rather they blame me than you.” 

Barnes leans forward like he wants to grab at Steve but thinks better of it. Instead he places his hand on the table with exaggerated calm. 

“They’re wondering how it’s possible they’ve barely seen or heard a peep from any of us,” Natasha finally adds to the conversation when the silence stretches on too long. “And they’re asking questions about Tony, why he’s been here so long.” 

And great. Here he is, messing things up again without even meaning to. “I can go -” And he was going to say back to New York, work from there, somehow get it all back across the ocean to Barnes or vice versa. It’d make things incredibly more complicated not being in the same place, but it’s theoretically possible.

He’s going to say it, but he’s cut off by Steve’s sharp, “No.” He holds a hand out at Tony like he’s about to leap up and leave right then. “No,” he repeats, visibly trying to look and sound calmer. “You need to stay. We need you here.” And it’s only how Tony’s words seemed to put Barnes into a weird sort of minor, contained panic that stops him from protesting any further. A conversation for another time, maybe. Now’s not the moment. 

“So what, you just waltz in there and go, “I’m here! Ignore all my missing friends!”?” he says instead. 

“I’ve got a lawyer. They’ve agreed to talk, but they want to do it in person. Just a couple people. I’ve nearly got them to agree to let you guys go home.” He looks to Clint, Lang, Wanda. “I’m almost there,” and he sounds oddly pleading, like they’ve been blaming him for it all. In his mind, they probably have been. “I think I can do this.” 

And isn’t that flash of hope across Barton’s face something? He can’t hide it, until he seems to catch himself and does. It makes him look better, and Tony knows he’s gotten way too used to seeing him angry. 

“They’ll arrest you,” Wilson says, stating what they’re all thinking. “It’s dangerous.”

“I know. I’ll - I’ll deal with that if it happens.” Steve looks at Barnes again, who has since remained oddly quiet. He still says nothing.

“They’re not just going to let you walk out of there,” Wilson continues.

“I’ll deal with it.” He sounds stubborn, assured, and it makes Tony want to believe him. When no one responds, he says, “Natasha will come with me. Sam, you’ll stay here with Bucky.” The rest of them don’t need to be told. They’d go with Steve if he asked, but it’s clear from everything else he’s said that it’s them he’s trying to keep safe, in whatever misguided belief he has that it’s all on him alone to fix.

“Hey, I did not agree to that.” He points at Steve like a reprimanding mother. “No offense, man,” he adds to Barnes, who doesn’t respond. 

“Please, Sam,” Steve says, and they have some weird, brief, telepathic conversation solely via eye contact that has Sam visibly giving in by the end of it. 

“You’ve already made up your mind,” Barnes finally says. He doesn’t look up from where he’s been staring at a spot on the table that apparently holds some great significance to him.

“I have,” Steve answers, soft, and suddenly Tony feels like the rest of them should vacate the room pronto. “We need the extra time.”

It turns out to be Barnes who vacates pronto before any of the rest of them can, though. He stands, says, quite simply, “Okay.” Then he’s gone, leaving Steve staring after him looking some sort of combination of heartbroken and utterly pathetic. 

Wilson pushes up out of his chair. “I’ll go -” he motions after Barnes vaguely, and follows him out.

After a moment, T’Challa also stands. “There is much to arrange,” he says, sounding particularly kingly and reassuring in those five words.

He grasps Steve’s shoulder briefly. “Thank you,” Steve says, quiet. T’Challa smiles, and leaves after a brief set of murmured goodbyes. 

“Come on, Steve,” Natasha says next, standing up. He goes to her, and she swipes a line down his back as she turns to exit with him.

“This was fun. Let’s do it again,” Tony says, the rest of them getting up to leave. 

“Would you like to watch a movie?” Wanda asks, and at first he thinks it’s directed to one of the others but she’s looking directly at him, which, huh. Considering the way he treated her - which was, admittedly, more than a little misguided although from a sincere place that might have worked if people ever listened to him - it’s not something he expected to ever be offered directly.

“We will be working together, will we not? We should be comfortable around each other again,” she says when he doesn’t answer. He suspects he looks a bit like a goldfish who has just been shown a picture of a shark and told they’re getting married, ie. flabbergasted and maybe a little wary. She’s practically a child, he has to remind himself. The youngest of them by far. Nothing to be worried about there. And she’s not wrong. 

“Sure, why not,” he says, when Wanda does nothing more than look at him. “Let’s go do that.” 

 

 

Bucky finds Steve that evening. 

He’s just come out of the shower, and it makes his breath catch in his throat in a way that is not appropriate to the situation. 

“Jesus, Buck, don’t do that,” he says when Bucky opens the bathroom door. He turns, wrapping a towel around his waist. He’s beautiful, Bucky thinks, not for the first time. (Not even close to the first time.) It’s not right.

He steps forward, close, leans his forehead against Steve’s shoulder. It’s probably not appropriate but he finds he doesn’t care. They’ve done more, really. He remembers it all, even if they never talk about it. 

“You’re going to leave tonight, aren’t you?” he asks. 

Steve clears his throat, lets one hand settle on Bucky’s back and the other on his hip. His touch is so light that Bucky can barely feel it through his clothes. “Yeah. It’s - yeah.” 

“I don’t want you to leave,” Bucky admits. He’s ashamed. He’s not sure if he’s being selfish or not. 

Steve makes a hurt noise, and his right hand clenches around Bucky’s hip so that Bucky can finally feel it at a level that is useful. “I don’t want to either. We need more time though, Buck. _You_ need more time.”

Bucky pulls away abruptly. Steve’s hand grips harder before letting go, letting him take a few steps away. “I don’t want to be your excuse for this.” 

“You aren’t. Never,” Steve’s reaches still before letting his hand drop. “You need time. Tony needs time. And I have to get the others home. Clint and Scott, they have kids. It’s - this is the only way to do this. It’d happen anyway, either now or later. It just helps in other ways if I do it now.” 

“Why do you have to go? Wilson’s right. They’re not going to let you go.” He sounds more desperate than he wants to. He wants to pull it back in. 

“They won’t give in otherwise. Don’t you think I’ve tried?” Steve turns away, frantic, then back again. “God, can we do this when I’ve got clothes on at least?”

“No,” he says, stubborn.

It makes Steve laugh, though, short and abrupt and in a way that doesn’t make the shadows in his eyes leave at all but that still breaks the tension enough.

“Can I just -” he takes a step closer to Bucky again. 

And he gives in, clears his throat, nods. “Yeah.”

Steve steps forward again, pulls Bucky in closer this time so that they are touching all along their fronts. He wraps his arm around Steve’s neck, grips his opposite shoulder harder than he really should.

“Would it be clichéd if I kissed you now?” Steve asks, too long later.

“Yes,” Bucky answers, but turns his face anyway, pulls back enough to move his hand to the back of Steve’s neck to guide him in.

They don’t talk about this, but it’s easy, so easy. It’s all the times before Steve found Peggy and the war found Bucky. (God, Steve had loved Peggy. They had both loved Peggy in their own ways, and hated the war in their own as well.) It’s the familiar noise in the back of Steve’s throat when Bucky shifts, the unintended side effect of aligning their hips more closely. It’s knowing exactly how to move further, to wedge his thigh between Steve’s legs and push. It’s the stutter of Steve’s breath, the breathless “Shut up,” when Bucky smirks against his lips. 

“This isn’t because I’m leaving,” Steve says urgently, pushing Bucky back toward the bedroom. His back collides with the doorframe when they misaim, but he barely notices, just shifts enough to get them through the actual doorway. “Don’t think that. Never think that. You could’ve -” His words fall off into a moan when Bucky pushes the towel away, gets ahold of the length of him and pulls. 

They practically trip and fall back onto the bed, a move that’s way too ungraceful for two men as well trained as they are. Steve pushes Bucky’s hand away, and he has one brief moment to wonder if he’s done something wrong before Steve’s nudging him into a sitting position so he can pull at his shirt from where he’s straddled over and around his hips. “You could’ve walked in on me in a towel anytime,” he continues babbling, like there was no pause. “I would’ve - Anytime. Forever. Even without the towel.” 

Bucky hums his agreement against the skin of Steve’s chest if only to show he’s listening to his nonsense, and that he gets it. Once he’s free of his shirt, he runs his hand down Steve’s side to his hip, around his back, down.

“I - this isn’t goodbye,” Steve continues, now pushing at Bucky’s pants. He kneels up high enough to let Bucky move up so that he can push them over his hips. “It’s just bad timing. I should’ve - we - God, I missed you, Buck,” he says, and Bucky can’t take it anymore, reaches up to pull Steve’s face down to his again to shut him up. He kisses him, gentle, careful. 

“Okay. It’s all right. I know.” 

Steve nods, seems to accept it, and Bucky simultaneously tries to keep kissing him while also leaning forward to push his pants and socks off the rest of the way. He’s only marginally successful, but it doesn’t matter in the end because he finally gets his clothes off and then it’s just skin, skin and warmth. He moves his hand back to Steve’s hip and pushes down slightly, just enough for Steve to get the hint to lower his body again.

He groans when Steve obeys, shifts, wraps one hand around him and rubs his thumb in a motion that makes his vision go blurry for a moment.

“God, okay, come here,” he says, even though Steve hasn’t gone anywhere. He pulls them down into a horizontal position fast enough that Steve barely has time to catch himself before falling straight into Bucky’s chest. He huffs a laugh, but thankfully returns to what he was doing.

And it’s still easy (so easy). Steve’s breath still stutters in the same way, like he’s hovering on a precipice and forgotten how to breathe. They’re both still quieter than they need to be now, decades away from having to keep it a secret and in a much more sound-proofed room. Bucky’s hair still feels like it’s standing on end like every part of him is reaching out until Steve can smooth it down with a hand along his skin. But also there are difference. Steve feels different, years of working for SHIELD moulding his body in a sort of way. He’s more restrained, in a fashion. Bucky’s bulkier than he was, and short one arm. It’s easy, and different, but no less good. 

 

 

Steve reluctantly gets out of the bed at midnight. First, though, he kisses along Bucky’s back, down his shoulder and then over to his mouth. “I told Natasha I’d meet her at 1,” he says against Bucky’s mouth. 

Bucky protests in a sleepy whine, bringing his hand up to hold Steve in place. It makes him smile at the same time that it hurts almost physically, because here he is with Bucky and he has to leave. 

He pulls on clothes and then goes to let in the cat, who is scratching at the door like she heard him get up. Bucky watches him pack his bag haphazardly. His hand is wound through the cat’s fur, and she’s purring loudly. 

Steve goes to them both and sits down on the bed. 

“I don’t even know whose cat she is,” he says idly, scratching behind her ear. 

“Stark’s,” Bucky responds, which is not the answer Steve was expecting at all. He looks up, surprised, and Bucky just says, “I don’t know. He brought her for some reason.” 

“I’ll have to ask about it when I get back,” Steve says. Truthfully, he’s trying not to let show how nervous he is. He knows he doesn’t get to just come back to Wakanda without a battle. He knows there isn’t any evidence that he broke the others out of the Raft, but everyone obviously suspects him anyway, and there are lots of other things they could pin on him if they really cared to. But that’s not what this is about. It’s about helping Bucky and the others, because he said he’d make this better, and he will.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks?” Bucky says, uncertainty making it a question. 

“Yes,” he says, trying to inject as much conviction into it as he can. He pulls Bucky in with one hand, touches their foreheads, and Bucky clutches at the bend of his elbow with his own. “ _Yes_.”

“I’m coming after you if you don’t come back. As soon as Stark and Wanda sort out my brain, I’m there.” 

“I wouldn’t expect anything else,” he answers, taking just a moment to breathe him in. “Stay safe, all right?”

“You’re the one who better do that,” Bucky says fiercely.

“Okay,” is the only word he can get out. He kisses him then, once, and then again, lingering. 

“I have to go,” he says finally. 

“Fine. I’m replacing you with the cat anyway,” Bucky says, pushing him away. The gentleness of it belies the motion, though, takes it from something that might hurt to something for the best. 

“I always knew it was a possibility.” He tries to keep his voice light, and isn’t sure how well he succeeds.

“Go,” Bucky says gently. “Romanoff shouldn’t be kept waiting.” 

Steve stands finally, and then leans forward to kiss him again. Not the last time. Never the last time. Everything will be fine. He has to trust Tony and Wanda. Bucky will be fine, and Steve will come back. 

And then he leaves.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the added warning (panic attacks).
> 
> I am leaving the country for a week but wanted to post something first, hence why this sort of feels unfinished (it's actually half of a much longer part). If I can write the remaining scene or two on the plane I will; otherwise, give me a week plus a little bit for the next update. **Edit on Aug 22:** There will be a delay due to an intensely busy work week. Thank you for your patience!

Steve disappears in the middle of the night.

“Bloody fucking fuck,” Tony says, going oddly British. He blames walking in on Wanda and Natasha watching _Love, Actually_ the day before and for some reason staying around to watch the rest with them. Wanda had even looked relaxed this time, and complained about Mark being creepy every time he came on screen. It was nice. But British. “He pulled a move straight out of a romcom with lazy writing. Did you know he was going to do that? I didn’t know he was going to do that.” 

Barnes just nods. He looks withdrawn and Tony wants to pull him out of it, somehow help. He’s pretty sure the only person who could do that just left, though. 

“He’ll be back,” Wilson says. Tony’s not entirely sure who he’s trying to convince.

“Want to go work on the arm?” he offers after an awkward beat. It’s probably completely the wrong thing to suggest, but it’s all he’s got. He’s not much good for anything else.

“Yes, please,” Barnes responds, like a polite, shy schoolboy. God, these people. 

 

 

He goes to Steve’s room. 

It's empty, of course. It’s very tidy, and the cleaning staff have been keeping out of their rooms so it's all Steve. Bucky remembers him being - not messy, really, but sprawling. He would leave little marks of himself all over his apartment. There's none of that here. Bucky wishes he knew when, how that changed, whether it was the military or the new century. Was it simply a byproduct of losing all of his possessions or an effort to keep things organized and understandable in a new environment? (Did Steve lose all of his things again in this century because of Bucky? He’s not sure he wants to know.)

There's very little to indicate Steve was ever there: a book on the nightstand, two workout shirts in the drawer when Bucky opens it to inspect, and, incongruously tucked into the corner of the tv, a picture of Peggy Carter. It is strange that Steve left it there. Maybe he has another copy, but he tends to, Bucky has noticed in a very short time, hoard bits of Carter like they are incredibly precious and not share them with others. To have it on full display like that is to admit to it. Bucky wonders if anyone was there for Steve when she died. Wilson, maybe, or Romanoff. Certainly not Stark, who mentioned her offhand once by what must have been accident, a pained note to his voice that he quickly skipped past. The other Carter, perhaps, but Steve hasn't mentioned her since they left her behind in another city, and the idea of asking about her leaves a sort of sour feeling that Bucky doesn't want to inspect, not least of all because she deserves better from both of them. Bucky wonders selfishly if the photo was left for him, a sort of misplaced shared sentiment. He regrets it, though, not seeing Carter one last time, even though it would’ve been impossible and cruel.

He finishes his inspection of the room but there's little sign of Steve in it otherwise. Even the sheets are freshly laundered, like he was preparing in case someone else had to stay in the room while he was gone. 

Bucky leaves again after barely five minutes, and he takes the photo with him. 

 

 

They fly to Shanghai, where Natasha disappears for a half hour and returns with straight, dark hair and a different gait, and then to New York, a somewhat circuitous path so that they hopefully don’t implicate Wakanda too much. It’s probably a useless gesture but so far there’s no real evidence as to where Steve’s been, and he’s going to keep it that way.

They're met at the airport by a private car. Whose he doesn’t know, but maybe Tony’s pulling strings from Wakanda, still making tiny little gestures to show the government up. The driver says nothing, but Natasha’s not worried, so Steve follows her in. 

They go to an impersonal apartment in Manhattan that Natasha dredged up from somewhere. He’s not sure if the tiny apartment in Brooklyn he’d finally gotten is even his anymore, and it’d be stupid to stay there besides. This one’s within walking distance of the UN (for them, anyway, and maybe a bit far for most) so it works well enough. There’s a sort of relief to being in New York, inasmuch as there can be in Manhattan in the 21st century. 

They order Thai and eat it cross-legged on the couch, Natasha’s toes digging into his thigh and the sounds of the street floating up through the cracked window that lets in a sliver of cold winter air. It’s weird being back to what he considers normal weather, winter feeling all that much colder for being away. He finds himself not hating it despite normally disliking being cold, because this is the closest he has to home anymore, this city, and it’s what he grew up with and missed. Natasha, when they’re done, gets up and leans in close to the window, revelling in it just a bit in a way she probably wouldn’t in front of most people. 

They’re both discombobulated by the time change and flying, but Natasha forces him into bed despite the tension that’s thrumming through his body, the knowledge that tomorrow he’s going to have to march into an office and hope they don’t arrest him. He doesn’t sleep, but she probably knew that would happen anyway, and he can hear her padding around the kitchen and living room so it’s obvious she doesn’t either. He’s not sure if that should make him even more nervous, but if she were _really_ worried she probably wouldn’t be letting him hear her being still awake, so he tries to shove it aside.

In the morning he wakes up to two texts from Sam, one that says, “Dude, pick me up something Christmas-y.” and another just a minute after that says, “Also, good luck.” They stop at one of the many Starbucks locations, and he buys a plain coffee for himself, a caramel macchiato and a blueberry muffin for Natasha, and a latte for his lawyer, which he hopes will be something she’ll drink.

“God, you really are a superhero,” Ruth says when he holds it out once they find her at a park a block from the UN headquarters. “Here,” she says, handing the giant folio she’s holding to Natasha and simultaneously taking the drink before rummaging around in her purse. “Pretend this isn’t happening. Also, pretend this is your phone. Just in case. We can’t be too paranoid.”

She takes the folio back. “I assume you aren’t staying?” she asks, raising one eyebrow at Natasha, who nods. She’s currently looking thoroughly normal, wearing yoga pants and, incongruously in his opinion, a nice pair of thick-heeled boots and a fashionable jacket, her dark hair up in a ponytail and Starbucks in her hand. She painted her nails black during the night, and they stand out against the cup and her slightly reddened-from-the-cold fingers.

“I’ll find you after if there’s no trouble, and before if there is,” she says, low so that only Steve can hear. Ruth’s casually looking off in another direction, giving them a moment. Natasha grips Steve’s arm briefly, and the paper Starbucks bag with the still-uneaten muffin crinkles. She doesn’t give him any platitudes of reassurances, just that soft touch before she lets go and disappears through the park. 

“Come on, then. I can’t believe we’re doing it here of all places. What kind of statement are they trying to make? Do you think there’s a back door we can slip you through unnoticed, just to mess with them?” Ruth says as soon as Natasha’s gone. She takes a sip of her latte and looks around like a secret passageway into the United Nations building will appear. When nothing does, she sighs, repeats, “Come on,” and sets off.

Unfortunately he does get noticed, and he hopes that doesn’t mean there will be reporters on the way out. For now it just earns him some odd looks, like no one’s sure whether they should be telling the authorities he’s there. He gets it, he really does, because he’s still not sure it’s legal for him to be there either, but it’s uncomfortable anyway.

They pause in front of door to the room they’ve been directed to. Ruth adjusts her skirt, swipes at the front of his jacket with the hand holding her coffee, straightens her shoulders. “Let’s do this,” she says, inflected like they’re in some sort of bad action film, and opens the door.

 

 

His plan means not putting too much pressure on Wanda, not putting too much stake in a new piece of technology (even if it’s one he made and therefore works perfectly) and hopefully, _hopefully_ saving Barnes just a bit from getting lost in his own memories, because he’s spent another week with Barnes since Steve left, almost near constantly whenever the both of them have a moment, which is basically always minus sleep, and even though that’d been his idea from the beginning, it’s all just solidified. There’s something inexplicable about him that just makes everyone internally scream “Save the assassin, save the world” even though Barnes could probably 100% save himself. Not unlike Claire the cheerleader. He thinks. He never did finish that show. 

His plan only sort of works.

“We just need to break the chain,” Tony explains, like it’s that simple, like he hasn’t already explained how this is meant to work. Wanda’s leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. Barnes is standing somewhere behind him near the windows, making him nervous as all hell. “So we don’t have to deal with the final version. We just need to stop the association between the chain of words and crazy doom soldier. They did it over time, right?” he asks, turning to look over his shoulder at Barnes. 

“Yes,” he answers, terse. 

“And you remember some of it?”

Again, just a simple “Yes.” 

“Great. Let’s start with something else then. A practice run, if you will. Which you will. Will, I mean. Here, stand here.” 

He rearranges Barnes without actually touching him, puts him by a corner of the frame that Tony and his new Wakandan friend Mimi erected. (Mimi, whose voice is deep in contrast to her name (“Nickname,” she had said, but not given further information as to what her actual name was), was the one to hand over everything they had started for Barnes, with a warning that she was sticking close to make sure he didn’t mess anything up for him or them. They got along swimmingly, despite the threats.) He hands over the glasses, gestures at his face because surely even Barnes knows how to put them on, and then backs out of the area. He goes to stand by Wanda, who has brought her feet up onto her chair and looks small and young. Which she is. But still. Reassurance or something.

“Start with something benign. Happy, if you can manage. A place and memory you know well,” Tony says. “Just think about it. BARF’ll do the rest.” 

Barnes looks at him, startled. “Now?” he asks, like the act of putting him there wasn’t indication enough.

“Now,” Tony answers firmly. He’s not sure if he should be coddling Barnes or not. He goes for not, because it’s more work the other way.

As he watches, a sort of determination settles over Barnes. There’s more to the thing, of course, and Barnes knows as much of it as he can understand, but this is all that really matters: Barnes doing his part, just remembering and not questioning it.

It’s like turning a TV on: Suddenly, after only a brief pause, there’s an image. They’re looking at an empty apartment, bright and clean and homey. Tony barely has time to take in the details (a doll sitting on the sofa like it’s waiting for someone, a stack of books set on the floor, a pile of knitting tucked beside the books) before the door in the image bursts open, startling Tony despite himself. A young girl rushes through, maybe 7 or 8, followed by a young Barnes and Steve, looking to be around 12 or so. He hears Wanda’s breath catch next to him, and he knows what it is. It’s weird, seeing Steve like this. Small and pale, as thin as he is large now, but… well, happy. He’s laughing, grinning back at Barnes, who it’s similarly strange to see. He’s a bit off, like present-day Barnes can’t quite remember how it felt to be anyone but who he is now. Hazy, almost, his features a bit too old in places, a bit too tired in others. But the effort is there, and the effect is well enough. Strangely, everything else seems to be remembered almost perfectly, down to the pencil that skitters across the floor when Steve accidentally kicks it.

“We’ll find it, don’t you worry, Steve Rogers,” the girl says. “Elsie will help us. Won’t you, Elsie?”

She looks pointedly at Barnes, who sighs. “I certainly will, Becca,” he says, in a terrible impression of an Irish accent that’s high-pitched. He scowls, pushes Steve a bit when he barely stifles a laugh. 

The girl, Becca, smiles, though. “You’re getting better,” she says. “Maybe Mrs. Rogers’ll teach you more.” 

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s help Steve find his stupid drawing book now, how about that?” 

“It’ll be here. It must be. We’ve checked everywhere else,” Steve says, and Tony wonders when he lost that accent, if it’s still there somewhere. “Buck, go look in your room. Becca, you look here. I’ll check the kitchen,” he says, proving that his ability to boss people around has always been there. 

“Steve’ll have to -” the young Barnes in the image starts, turning to Becca, and then it abruptly cuts out. The room disappears.

Tony looks to Barnes, who is holding the glasses in his hand and looking shaken. “I - Sorry,” he looks up at Tony. “Sorry. I can do it again.” He looks like he wants to do anything but, and Tony wants to be frustrated, he does, but instead he just feels tired. Barnes did what he said - he chose a memory that looked like it was as benign and as boring as could be, and yet it still left him rattled. Which was why Wanda was here, because Barnes being terrified of the memories they were trying to modify wouldn’t do much but keep them terrified. He wasn’t sure if throwing Wanda in right away was a good idea, though. 

This was all beyond him. He was making it up as he went along, but couldn’t let them know that. Wanda beside him was silent. 

“No, let’s just try it again tomorrow. Think of this as dipping your toe in. You know how it works now. It’s good. First step done,” he says, and he feels awkward. Reassurance is not what he normally does. Barnes looks annoyed, whether with Tony or with himself, he’s not sure. He nods, though. He very gently sets the glasses down on the table, taking more care than is really necessary. And then he leaves, just like that.

Tony sighs, and runs a hand through his hair. “Well,” he says, and then stops, inadequate. 

“Yes,” Wanda answers, like Tony had said anything worth agreeing to. She stands, stretches like she’s been sitting somewhere cramped for hours. “I think I will go think about this further. It’s like a puzzle.” She says it lightly, like they aren’t faced with a giant problem with a solution that Tony’s not actually 100% sure will work.

She smiles at him, gentle, and he wants to tell her not to leave but he doesn’t, and she does, and then he’s alone in a room again, with no idea what to do next. 

 

 

“Hey, Barnes.”

It’s Wilson, his gait giving him away long before his voice.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Bucky answers, not even turning to look at him. He’s looking east, trying to gain familiarity with the surroundings as best he can without going outside. It’s long overdue, and inadequate. It makes something in him itch.

“Is that what you think Steve is making me do?”

Bucky doesn’t answer. He doesn’t think it was made that explicit but intrinsically, yes, that’s likely what Steve was aiming for. 

Wilson answers like Bucky had said that out loud. “Nah, he just wanted you to have a friendly face and me to be safe, because he’s stubborn like that.” 

Bucky still says nothing. Surprisingly, Wilson stays.

“Wanda’s young and understandably doesn’t trust anyone new, Lang and Barton have got their own things, T’Challa’s too busy being a king, and Stark’s Stark. Which leaves me and our new cat recruit and, maybe I’m wrong, I think I’m better at conversation.”

If he continues not to answer, maybe Wilson will leave. He doesn’t want him there just because he feels obligated. He’s seen the way he looks at Bucky, since the beginning. He doesn’t trust him, and was only there because of Steve. That’s fair. It’s smart. Bucky won’t be the one to force his company on him. 

The pause is only slightly awkward. He almost regrets it.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Wilson says, and it catches Bucky off guard. Not the words themselves precisely, but the odd sort of yearning that goes through him at them. He hadn’t realized how horribly tired he was of this building. It makes him a bit antsy, sure, being stuck there, but most things do so that’s not abnormal. 

And then he’s embarrassed and annoyed, because what if Wilson could tell what he was doing and tells Steve. Steve will be disappointed that Bucky doesn’t feel safe, even though Steve clearly doesn’t either and Bucky feels as safe as he knows is possible at the moment. 

He’s faced with the choice of fresh air and better intel and a chance outside these walls, or continuing to ignore Wilson in the hopes he’ll give up on trying to supply Bucky with fake friendship.

He, only a bit to his own surprise, opts for the former.

“I’m not supposed to,” he says, which they both know means yes.

Wilson shrugs, uncaring. “You’ll hear anyone coming a mile off and somehow manage to disguise both of us as a single tree or something. It’ll be fine.” He probably shouldn’t be so flippant about the rules because there’s a very good reason for them, but Bucky senses it’s not that, not really. This seems to be Wilson doing what he thinks is best at the moment, trying to help, and maybe not entirely because he told Steve he would. He decides to accept it, for now anyway.

 

It sounds like a bad, convoluted joke: A king, a billionaire, a witch, an assassin, and a cat meet in a bar…

Except it’s not a bar. It’s Tony’s room that happens to have alcohol that none of them are drinking, but close enough. T’Challa’s standing regally by the wall, because he does everything regally, while Barnes hovers near the windows again and Tony and Wanda both are sitting on the floor because Emma wanted to play and they both somehow got manipulated into it. She, as a cat, has gotten bored and is now sprawled on her back on the carpet. They, as the humans, for some reason haven’t moved. 

“Have you heard from Steve?” Wanda asks, the only one of them apparently brave enough to ask what they all wanted to know. 

“Unfortunately, no,” T’Challa answers, and he does actually sound regretful about it. “I heard they arrived safely though, and I would know if anything went too badly. We must trust them in the meantime.” 

Tony tries to ignore the way Barnes looks as disappointed at that as anyone with no facial expression can look. He’s only mildly successful. “Any more information about when they’ll be back?” he asks after a moment, because he might as well be completely unsuccessful instead. 

“No. I do not believe the timeline has changed. The JCTC will undoubtedly want to speak to him directly as well, which will make it nearly impossible for them to move faster.” 

Ah, those guys. Tony hopes Steve gets a chance to stick it to Ross. Either of them. Both Rosses. 

“Maybe Carter’ll get assigned to the case,” Tony says, if only to get Barnes to scowl. 

Ah, there it is. 

“Agent Carter was reassigned after helping Captain Rogers, unfortunately,” T’Challa says dryly, which leaves Tony feeling weirdly guilty, like it was somehow his fault. He’s actually surprised she wasn’t fired all together.

“Can we get this done before he returns?” Barnes says abruptly. He’s looking directly at Tony. It’s unnerving. Beside him, Wanda stills. 

“Get what specifically done? I need more information here, Barnes,” he says, if only to cover how unnerved Barnes’ stare is making him. 

“My memories. The - BARF.” He says the acronym with distaste, and if there’s ever a reason to not actually change it like he planned, it’s in that annoyed expression on Barnes’ face.

“Why?” Tony asks. “Cap could help. You know, just be there. Whatever you guys have got going on. No judgment here.” 

“He can’t - I don’t want him to see that. It’s not - he’ll -” And like a switch has been flipped, Barnes looks abruptly panicked, his breathing going uneven. 

“Wanda, go get Wilson,” he says, getting to his feet. She hurries to obey. Emma, startled by their sudden movement, zips under the couch.

T’Challa’s taken a step forward but Barnes backs up so he stops where he is, silent. Tony’s not sure what to do either, and watching Barnes struggle to breathe almost makes him panic himself, and God, this is not the time.

Luckily Wilson must’ve been close because he runs in not long after, Wanda following more hesitantly behind. He looks at Tony, and he can’t really read his expression - confused, maybe, or maybe that’s just the expression of someone who wants to know who the fuck set off the assassin. Either way, his focus immediately goes to Barnes. 

“Hey, man,” he says, like he’s just greeting him for a casual day at the park. He crouches down in front of him, and Tony can’t hear whatever he says after that, both because of low volume and because he’s trying not to bolt from the room. 

Whatever he says, though, Barnes nods, and then Wilson places one hand on the back of his shoulder and Barnes immediately grabs onto his outstretched forearm in a grip so tight it looks like it must hurt. Wilson doesn’t even flinch. 

Eventually Wilson talks Barnes down, or Barnes talks himself down, and Tony doesn’t have his own anxiety attack. T’Challa and Wanda leave once Barnes is calmer, to give him more space, and then it’s just Sam, Barnes and Tony in a room together, a situation he couldn’t have been forced into just a couple months ago. And now here he is.

“Christ, Barnes, I would’ve agreed without the histrionics,” he says eventually, still feeling shaky himself. 

To his surprise, Barnes laughs, a harsh sound. “I’ll keep that in mind next time,” he says, and huh, apparently it just takes a panic attack to bring out his sense of humor. 

Tony falls onto the couch, sprawled until Sam stands up and nudges his leg aside so he can sit with him. Tony only moves just far enough to let him sit but not far enough to stop them from touching because dammit, sometimes he just wants human contact too, but is way too cool to ask for that. 

Sam seems to get it anyway, because he pats his shin and then leaves his hand resting just above Tony’s ankle, like they are two men who do this sort of thing all the time and it’s not awkward at all. It’s grounding, though. 

Barnes is still on the floor, looking oddly small with his legs folded under him. Sam, again with his preternatural therapist sensibilities, seems to agree, because he says, “Get up here, Barnes. Get off the floor,” and then Barnes is squishing onto the couch with them, and Tony fishes the remote out from between the cushions so that this whole thing isn’t entirely weird. 

Once Barnes has fallen asleep curled around Emma on Tony’s bed, and Tony and Sam have maybe figured out what the hell is going on in _Diamonds Are Forever_ with only a small amount of help from the internet, Sam says, unexpectedly, “Why’d you send Wanda to get me?”

“It wasn’t obvious?” Tony asks, unable to not sound incredulous.

“No, I mean, you could’ve handled it.” 

Tony scoffs. “Right. Because Barnes would’ve let me anywhere near him like that. He trusts you.” 

Wilson stares at him like he’s said something incredibly stupid, which, shouldn’t a therapist have a better poker face than that? “The guy is letting you mess around with his memories and build him a crazy mechanical arm despite you being the one who blew the last one off. He just _fell asleep on your bed_. Pretty sure that means he trusts you too.” 

There isn’t anything to say to that, so Tony turns his face away so he won’t have to look at the other man because this conversation makes him uncomfortable. So, horribly uncomfortable. “That’s stupid,” he says, which, well. Not his best.

“You’re stupid,” Sam responds, which is even less his best so makes Tony feel a tad less inadequate. 

“A good response from a ten year old,” he says, fiddling with the edge of the sofa cushion. He forces himself to stop, literally sitting on his hand.

“It’s true. I’m going to run away with Nat and see how all of y’all do. You’re idiots, the lot of you.” 

“We would fall apart after like, five minutes, until T’Challa saved us.”

When he looks back at Sam, he’s grinning. “Damn right you would. But seriously, Barnes trusts you, as much as he’s able to trust anyone that isn’t Steve. You’re going to have to get used to that at some point.”

“Not if I keep pretending it’s not happening,” he answers, because when he thinks about this weird sort of tentative friendship-like thing he’s got going with the man who killed his parents, well. He doesn’t want to touch that with a ten foot pole. He doesn’t want to analyze why Barnes is making the decisions he’s making, or sort of maybe trusting _Tony_ of all people, who is one of the worst people to ever put your trust in ever, even when he hasn’t tried to kill you within the last year. Well, not kill. He still maintains that. He didn’t want Barnes dead, really, just, well, not in his vicinity. Or in anyone else’s. God, Wilson’s right. They’re all idiots. 

“Idiots,” Sam says, like he’s echoing Tony’s thoughts and, again, weird. Weird therapist telepathy. 

“T’Challa, save us,” Tony says dramatically, flopping back into the sofa. 

Sam snorts a laugh. “Give me the remote. I’m not watching another Bond movie. Roger Moore is next and I’m not dealing with him right now.” 

“Do you think T’Challa’s more of a le Carré fan? Because I like my spy movies with jet packs and space sex, not boring meetings in lakes, no matter how well done that movie was. That might be the clincher, the thing that makes me beg you to stay.”

“Just pass the damn remote, Stark.” 

 

 

He’s just come out the door when he spots her. Ruth has stayed behind, because Steve was getting the sort of antsy that comes off as tense and abrupt and she was getting annoyed at him for it, and in the end it was better for everyone if he just left. Thankfully no one had argued. Too much. So he’s alone, which is good, because he abruptly stops and at least this way there’s no one there to question why.

Sharon standing near the next building, off to the side so that foot traffic can easily move around her. Her hair is shorter, and she’s dressed practically in a black peacoat over dark jeans. She looks good, and Steve feels an odd little swoop at the sight of her, a feeling he can’t quite identify. It’s unexpected, her standing there, so there’s that surprise mixed with dread. And guilt, a bit, though they’ve spoken on the phone since having to go their separate ways, and they’d mutually agreed it was too fraught of a situation. 

“Hey, soldier,” she says once he’s close enough. “Heard you were in town through the grapevine.” She hooks his arm through his like it’s normal, like this was a planned meeting. “Walk with me.” She leans against his side. “If you look casual enough, no one’ll even notice it’s you,” she adds conspiratorially, knowing right away that’s what he wants most. She takes his sunglasses out from where they were hooked into his pocket and slides them onto his face, somehow managing to do it without poking him in the eye. “Got to protect those beautiful blue eyes.” She smiles softly up at him, and then turns them so that they’re walking away from the UN building. 

He hasn’t said a word yet, he realizes, so he clears his throat, asks, “How are you?” like they’ve never met before and he’s trying to make stupid small talk. 

“Great. They’ve got me at Langley, teaching the new kids how to fight supervillians and toe the line.”

He can’t help but laugh. “Are they sure they’ve got the right person for that?” 

She smirks, that defiant little quirk of her lips he likes so much. “We’re alike in that area. Do what they say until they say something you don’t like, right? Then do what is right and fuck the consequences.” 

“Pretty much.” 

“It’s exactly what these new ones need to learn,” she says. “But between you and me, I think they just didn’t know what to do with me. They want to keep me around because I’m useful. I’ve got the connections. But they also don’t want me just handing over information to the enemy again.” She pokes him gently in the side with the hand that’s not hooked on his arm. “That’s you.”

“Hopefully not for much longer,” he says more bitterly than he means it to be. He says it, wants to believe it, but until it happens, he doesn’t really think it’ll ever be true. 

“About that. Come on, let’s get a coffee. Tell me all you can, and then tell me all you can’t.” 

He smiles again, and lets her lead him. He feels a bit calmer for her presence. She looks good. More relaxed than he’s seen her in the past, for all that the inaction of her new position probably rankles. It’s nice, though, how she expects nothing from him, like they’re just gossiping about work instead of talking about things that affect world relations. So they sit in a corner where they’re blocked from most views and no one’ll even have a chance to recognize him, and he tells her what he can, and a little bit of what he shouldn’t, and it almost feels normal.

 

 

The thing is, it’s normal to be alone with Barnes now, with usually only Emma for company. It’s comfortable. They work well together. Barnes, Tony discovers, is good with all this modern day science. He somehow ends up in Tony’s plans for other projects, things that he fiddles away with when he has to take a break from thinking about arms and brains like he’s Dr. Frankenstein trying to assemble a human. He thinks that might help Barnes, too, once he discovers it. “I was a mechanic at one time,” Barnes says, grave like he’s a wizened old wizard who has lived for hundreds of years. 

“Cool,” Tony says. “Pass me that wrist plate.” Because for all that it’s comfortable, he still doesn’t know how to handle the fact that Barnes is a real boy. It’s weird, thinking about a boring old 1930s-era mechanic killing his parents.

Until one day it isn’t. Mimi’s just left with a chipper goodbye and a cheerful warning to not fuck up while she’s gone, so it’s quieter without her puttering around, peering over Tony’s shoulder and giving unnecessary input. (Fine, okay, sometimes it’s useful.) 

“Tell me about your sister,” he says, and catches himself by surprise as much as Barnes, who freezes where he’s curling and uncurling the fingers of the arm, which is missing its outer casing so is just a bunch of pseudo-musculature and pseudo-nerves that still aren’t responding the way Tony wants them to.

Tony thinks he isn’t going to respond, and resolutely spins the 3D hologram of the arm like he needs to see the elbow even though he doesn’t. But then, after a moment: “I actually had two.” Quiet, so quiet, like he’s confessing something horrible. 

Tony says nothing, scared to. 

There’s another pause, then: “Rebecca, who you saw, and Lucy. Thomas, between Becca and me, he died when he was four, in his sleep, gone one night just like that.” 

He shifts, starts moving the fingers again. Tony told him to, to try to loosen up some of the joints, but it’s gone beyond what’s necessary now. He doesn’t tell him he can stop, though.

“Becca,” Barnes continues, then stops. He stares at the fingers that he’s carefully bending at each knuckle joint. He clears his throat, then says, “I didn’t remember Becca until a year ago. I had just replaced her with Lucy in everything. It was so confusing - Luce kept changing ages. Sometimes she’d be taller than Steve, then shorter then him. Quiet one day, energetic the next. I don’t know what changed, but then suddenly there Becca was, and it all made so much more sense.” 

They’re quiet again, so long that Tony starts doing actual work. Emma nudges at his elbow, so he shifts one hand to scratch at her head until she settles on the table.

“Lucy’s still alive,” Barnes suddenly blurts, and it startles Tony into looking up at him. Barnes isn’t avoiding his eyes like he normally does, though. He looks almost defiant. “I didn’t want her to know I am. It’s nice, knowing she’s out there. I thought maybe I could spare her this, though. I guess that’s beyond my control now, isn’t it?” He smiles, and it’s sad. “I would’ve spared Steve it too, if he weren’t such a stubborn shit.” 

“He is that,” Tony agrees, because he isn’t sure what else to say. He wants to ask Barnes why he’s telling Tony all this. Surely there are better options. It’s probably just convenience - Tony’s there, almost constantly. 

“I’m sorry I killed your parents,” he says next, like it’s a natural segue. Tony fumbles, drops the metal plate he had been fiddling with, fingers gone shaky with shock and sudden nerves. “Hydra -” He stops, seems to rethink his statement, and then just says again, “I’m sorry.”

“Not really your fault, was it?” Tony forces himself to answer, and then has to clear his throat when it comes out gravelly. Weirdly, he finds it’s not even a lie: He doesn’t think it was Barnes fault. He’s still angry about it, yeah, but Barnes was just the weapon. Too bad it took this long to come to terms with that, though. As usual, he could’ve spared them all a lot of unnecessary effort. He’s never been very good at that, though, at not reacting vehemently to bad news. 

“It was still me though, wasn’t it?” He smiles again, bitter this time. A quirk of his lips that can maybe not even be called a smile. “It’s like... someone says the words, and everything just goes blank. Even now, I can remember all of them. I remember every single mission. But it’s distant, like I’m watching a movie. It’s not until I think about it more, about how I should feel about it, that it seems real.” And, again why is Barnes telling _him_ all this? He hasn’t said this many words in a row in Tony’s presence in ever. He wonders if he has for anyone. Does he tell Steve all these things? He feels like he should go get Sam, but heeds his previous words. Barnes, for some reason, trusts him. Or is really good at faking it and is playing the long game. 

“But it’s still me,” he continues, and luckily he doesn’t have Sam’s therapist ability to read thoughts, because now Tony feels guilty for his. He doesn’t _really_ believe Barnes is messing with him, trying to make him comfortable for some sort of nefarious purpose. He just can’t help considering it an option. 

“What kind of person has to force themselves to remember to feel something about people they’ve killed?” And that, there: Tony’s almost entirely certain that, at least, is something Barnes wouldn’t have said to Steve. 

“One who got brainwashed by a crazy evil organization.” And who is 100% a candidate for PTSD, he doesn’t add. That one he will leave for Sam.

Barnes just looks tired. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Definitely maybe. We really need to wipe those guys out completely,” Tony says.

“You can try. It’s hard, though. Cut one head off, and so on.” 

“Does Hydra have infinite heads? The organization, not the mythical creature. Because there aren’t that many people in the world.” 

Barnes just laughs, a bitter sound that holds no humor, and goes silent again. 

“You know what I want to know?” Tony offers after a moment, because he feels the need to add to the conversation, for Barnes to not walk out of here feeling awkward and self-conscious. “Why did dear old dad have vials of super soldier serum? SHIELD wasn’t the best of the bunch either, because they would’ve had to test that on humans eventually.”

He pauses, brief, not sure if he should say the next part, and then decides to fuck it and go for it anyway. “The amount of lives that have been sacrificed just over trying to replicate Cap… you think Howard would’ve maybe thought that one through more.” And isn’t that one more thing that Steve probably piles onto his shoulders. 

“Don’t blame the victim,” Barnes says lightly, and Tony can’t help the short laugh that sneaks through. When he looks up, there’s a genuine sort of smile hovering on Barnes’ face. 

“Yeah, yeah. Pass me that arm. I think I’ve figured out how to fix the stubbornly unresponsive pinky finger while we talked.” 

 

 

Bucky watches Stark, watches the way his eyes light up when something clicks and the ideas come together, the way he’s constantly fiddling with whatever is near, how he looks careless but is actually gentle with all of the things he’s working with. He watches the way he’s currently leaning over the table, elbows on the edge and head in his hands as he tries to decipher the translated Wakandan notes in front of him. 

They work until 2am, when Bucky calls it quits and shuts off the computers before Stark can protest. He herds him out of the room as best he can without touching him, and then pauses outside his room, because he has to force himself to say this. He might as well go all in, get all of the uncomfortable conversations out of the way in one go instead of dreading having another.

“Thank you,” he says, and he hopes it sounds as sincere as he means it, and not as choked as he feels about it.

“Don’t make me talk about feelings again,” Stark responds glibly, but then immediately adds, “But seriously, Barnes, it’s nothing.” 

“It isn’t. You didn’t have to do it. They would’ve figured something out.” 

“Yes. Well. This just moved it along faster. You’ve seen Mimi - she’s a mechanical monster. Not like, literally, obviously, that’s still just you -”

And he’s rambling, which means he’s uncomfortable, so Bucky decides to let this one go. “Shut up, Stark,” he says. “Take the thanks and go to bed.” 

“Can do. Sleep tight, gigabyte.” 

“Am I a computer now?”

Stark waves him off. “Don’t question it. Not my best. I feel awkward. Let me leave.” 

Bucky smiles and opens his door, letting Stark make his escape down the hall, the cat trotting along behind him as a near-constant shadow. 

His room is, of course, empty, and he wants Steve there so badly it’s an ache. He hasn’t spoken to him, and has no more information than the little that has been passed along to T’Challa. He hates it, being here while Steve is over there doing God knows what. 

His door shuts with a near silent click, and he turns off all the lights, kicks off his shoes, and then sprawls diagonally across the bed just because he can. He’s exhausted by feels wired still, and lies there in his clothes until he can’t anymore. Then he gets up, leaves his room, and silently goes to Wilson’s room. 

“I did not sign up for this,” he says groggily when Bucky curls at the bottom of his bed. “At least lie in the bed properly.” He pushes the blankets down and waits for Bucky to settle before turning his back to him and falling asleep. Bucky tries not to envy his ease in doing that, but after awhile his even breaths lull Bucky into sleep himself. 

 

The discussions are long, and boring, and Ruth does most of the talking while Steve tries not to glare at people. 

“You intimidate them,” she had said, passing him a box of granola bars. “Just sit there looking handsome and Captain America-y and let me do the rest. And don’t let your blood sugar levels drop too low. You’ll just be grumpier than usual.” 

So he sits there, feeling stupid and useless with whatever food she’s decided he requires that day. The media has, predictably, realized he’s in the city and doesn’t leave him alone every time he comes out. A photo of him looking startled and clutching a bag of vegetable chips like a lifeline ends up online, and it makes Natasha laugh enough that she prints it off and sticks it to the front of the fridge.

They’re making progress, though. The Sokovia Accords keep getting in the way, so the process is arduous and convoluted, but he thinks they’re getting somewhere. Maybe. Hopefully. 

“Even if you can stay, we have to leave right away,” Natasha says one night. Her laptop is balanced on her knees, and a glass of root beer on the arm of the chair. It looks dangerously precarious. 

“There’s chatter,” she says, fluttering one hand as if that somehow emphasizes her point. “People are still really mad at you. People who could make a move.”

“What else is new,” Steve mumbles, trying not to sound too bitter about it. He fails horribly. 

“I’ll talk to Ruth,” Natasha says, like Steve hasn’t said anything. “See if she can get us an end day, and then a fake one that we can leak. Might as well use my free time for something.” Steve doesn’t doubt she’s used her time for a hundred things since they got there, but he won’t question her on it. “Keep an ear to the ground, though. I can’t always watch your back.”

Steve turns to look at her, and she’s grinning. He can’t help but smile back. “Will do. Let’s just get this done.”

“I like that idea,” she says, and then passes her root beer to him before going to get another for herself. 

 

 

God, this is terrifying.

It’s the first day of what hopefully won’t be many. Barnes is standing in the doorway like he wants to fold into himself and disappear between the jamb and the wall. Wanda’s hovering behind him like she’s not sure what her role in this whole thing is, and Tony’s in the middle of an empty room at the furthest end from all the others, no furniture around except for the frame that makes up one half of BARF. 

“Barnes?” he ventures. He gets no response, so he tries again, adding some force behind it. “Barnes! James. Bucky. Look at me.” He snaps his fingers, and wonders for a moment if that’s going a step too far into rude, but it works. Barnes’ eyes snap to meet his. Almost. They do briefly, anyway, then skitter away again, but he at least looks present now.

“You remember how this is going to go?” he asks, and when Barnes nods, continues anyway. “It’s just going to be Wanda in here. I’ll be over there, on the other side of that wall. If you want us to stop for any reason, you say so, all right?”

They decided on this together. Barnes will be on one side of the room, and Wanda on the other side nearest the door. Tony will be outside the room in his suit. Barnes’ doctor is down the hall in another room with T’Challa, ready if Tony or anyone else calls for her. No one else is nearby. He was scared it wouldn’t work. Scared he’d hurt someone. Tony had had to point out, more than once, that he had held up pretty well against both him and Steve and that was when Barnes had possessed a crazy Nazi-made metal arm, and Wanda had her scary witch magic that had put Vision through several floors, so between both of them they’d all be fine. Probably. Hopefully.

“Look at me,” he says. He wants to reach out and touch but he doesn’t. Barnes, thankfully, does look. “If you want us to stop, you tell us.” 

He gets another nodded response, which is probably the best he’s going to get from the newly mute assassin. 

He hands him the glasses. “Let’s do this,” he says, and he doesn’t mean for it to come out so near a question but it does anyway. 

Barnes nods, determined and clearly shoving his fear down, and he takes the glasses from Tony. “Now get out,” he says, gruff, and offsets it with a small smile that just barely lifts the corner of his mouth.

“Aye aye, Captain.” 

“Wrong person,” Barnes says, slipping the glasses on.

Tony shrugs, moves to exit the room. “Close enough.”


End file.
